Kate WhannelPolitical reporter
Newly-elected Green Party leader Zack Polanski has told his party’s conference a tax on the wealthiest would end “rip-off Britain” and make the country “an affordable” place to live.
Addressing members in Bournemouth, he said taxing the assets of the richest 1% would enable the government to fund universal free childcare, special needs education and rural bus routes.
He also defended migrants and refugees to loud applause from the audience and accused Labour of being “handmaidens” of Reform UK adding: “When Farage says jump, Labour asks ‘how high’.”
Polanski has described himself as an “eco-populist” and is seeking to shift the party to the left to take on Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.
The prime minister has sought to tighten immigration controls in recent months, in what is being seen by critics as a response to Reform leading national opinion polls.
But Sir Keir launched an attack on Reform leader Nigel Farage in his Labour conference speech this week, accusing him of sowing division and not believing in Britain – something denied by Farage.
Unusually for a speech by a Green Party leader, Polanski did not focus primarily on the environment.
He told the conference: “You can not be an effective environmentalist without talking about the deep inequality in our society.”
Much of his speech centred on the problems posed by the cost of living, pointing to a rise in homelessness, tenants worried about their rent and families struggling to pay bills.
Polanski argued that the country’s problems were “rooted in an economic model built on austerity and privatisation” but that the Green Party would “break the shackles of poverty and hardship that lock so many in”.
He said some voters might worry that they could be hit by taxes on the wealthiest being proposed by his party.
“Hairdressers and plumbers saying understandably I’ve worked hard all my life. Why are you taxing me? Why are you taxing my ambition?”
However, Polanski said he was targeting people who “will make more money in one night than everyone in this room could probably earn in an entire year, more than the whole of Bournemouth could earn in an entire year”.
In a 20 minute speech, Polanski told the conference his party’s “horizons” would not be “narrow” and that he would “not be silent” on “the mass slaughter in Palestine”.
“We must stop selling arms to Israel, we must stop sharing intelligence,” he said.
He also criticised what he called a “draconian crackdown on the right to protest”.
“From terrorist proscription against protesters, to banning journalists from their conference, to diving into a rushed evidence-free plan for digital IDs that are likely to discriminate against minorities – the alarm bells of authoritarianism are now ringing.”
In his defence of refugees and migrants, Polanski said it was the “economic system” that was a “threat to the places we love… not people arriving small boats”.
To loud cheers from party members he declared: “‘We’ll say it loud, we’ll say it clear migrants and refugees are welcome here.”
He said the Greens wanted to stop small boats crossing the Channel through “safe and legal routes”.
He also blamed “a politics that tries to divide us and points the finger at each other, instead of at billionaires”.
In a contrast with comments from Sir Keir earlier this year, who said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers”, Polanski said: “This is a nation of neighbours.”
He said defending migration was important to him because of his own “confused and muddled” Jewish ancestry, which saw his family flee from Latvia to Ukraine to Poland and eventually to England.
Taking a moment to mark Thursday’s attack on a synagogue in Manchester, where Polanski grew up, he said “my heart is with the community.”
In the past year the Green Party has built on its success at the 2024 general election – when it won four MPs – by winning 74 seats in the local council elections.
Last month, Polanski was overwhelmingly backed by members in a leadership contest against the less combative duo of Green MPs Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns.
Since the election the party says its membership has risen by 20% to an all-time high of 80,000.
Polanski, who is a member of the London Assembly but does not have a seat in Parliament, has expressed interest in working with new party being set up by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and former Labour MP Zarah Sultana.
Speaking after the leadership election, he said it was “too soon to talk about joining electoral coalitions”, but he was interested in working with “anyone who wants to challenge a failing Labour government and take on fascism and the far right”.
