The Green Party has elected 42-year-old London Assembly member Zack Polanski to be their leader for the next two years.
The former actor and hypnotherapist, who was deputy leader from 2022, saw off competition from former leader Adrian Ramsay and another Green MP, Ellie Chowns, with a pitch that he could do for the Green Party what Nigel Farage has done for Reform and previously Ukip.
He describes his style of politics as “eco populism”, which galvanised party members, giving him a landslide victory over his rivals with 20,411 votes, while Ms Chowns and Mr Ramsay’s joint campaign received just 3,705 votes.
Mr Polanski was born David Paulden in 1982 to a Jewish family, who had adopted the surname after moving to the UK in an attempt to avoid antisemitism.
When he turned 18, he decided to change his name, adopting his grandfather’s original surname to show his pride in his heritage.
After growing up in Stockport and Salford, his early foray into politics was as a member of the Lib Dems, where he ran for Camden Council in 2015.
After making a name for himself by heckling Jeremy Corbyn for his failure to embrace the Remain campaign during the EU referendum, he switched to the Greens in 2017.
Following missing out on becoming an MP when he stood for the seat of Cities of Westminster and London in 2019, he was elected to the London Assembly in 2021 and a year later became the party’s deputy leader.
His pitch to Green members was that, despite not being an MP, he could give the party a more aggressive campaign style to make the case for issues like climate change, as well as culture war issues such as trans rights.
He has been a strong critic of Israel in the war with Gaza and a supporter of the Palestinians.
During the campaign he also released a video from Dover calling for migrants to be welcomed in a provocative move on the small boats debate.
According to reports, his candidacy for the leadership attracted a wave of new members with numbers increasing by 8 per cent.
Many of those, though, were former Labour members leaving the party over unhappiness with Sir Keir Starmer on welfare cuts and the Middle East crisis.
Mr Polanski has made clear that as leader, he will focus on broader issues of the left, not just climate change, and has already suggested working with Mr Corbyn’s new party.
Outside politics, Mr Polanski has had a colourful career. He worked with the theatre company DifferencEngine as an immersive theatre actor, including appearances in The Hollow Hotel, The People’s Revolt (in the Tower of London) and in the Peaky Blinders immersive theatre experience.
Mr Polanski also worked as a hypnotherapist. In 2013, a newspaper reporter requested a hypnotherapy session to increase her breast size and body image self-confidence for an article in the paper. Mr Polanski did the session without charge and featured in the published article. He said the article did not accurately reflect the situation, but, years later, apologised for his involvement.
