UK's Jewish reply to Zohran Mamdani is now certainly one of PM Keir Starmer's greatest challenges

[ad_1] LONDON — Lower than 4 months after being elected chief of the Inexperienced Get together, Zack Polanski, is quick rising as Britain’s most outstanding Jewish politician — and the standard-bearer for the nation’s newly energized radical left.

Younger, homosexual and vegan, Polanski, 43, is snapping on the governing Labour celebration’s heels within the polls, his ascent fueled by a Zohran Mamdani-like cocktail of guarantees to soak the wealthy and develop the federal government, married to an anti-Israel, id politics agenda.

“I take big inspiration from Mamdani,” Polanski proudly declared after the election of New York’s new mayor.

Polanski’s rise has additionally stymied the launch of Jeremy Corbyn’s new far-left celebration, which has been riven by infighting between allies of the disgraced former Labour chief.

And the Greens’ ascent is growing stress on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to tack to the left to stem the bleeding of its supporters to Polanski’s celebration.

Amid a dizzying array of U-turns, anaemic financial progress and hovering taxes, and speak of a management problem to Starmer, Labour’s assist has sunk within the polls. The Conservatives’ historic defeat final July means they continue to be within the doghouse in many citizens’ eyes. As a substitute, led by Nigel Farage — a populist libertarian who led the profitable marketing campaign for Brexit — the rebel right-wing Reform UK is making the political climate.

However whereas Farage mops up disenchanted Tories and chips away at Labour’s conventional working-class assist within the “crimson wall” constituencies of the north of England, Polanski is profitable the backing of youthful voters, particularly within the UK’s left-leaning massive cities.

A former actor-turned-hypnotherapist, Polanski defected from the centrist Liberal Democrats to the Greens in 2017. He was subsequently elected to the London Meeting, to which the capital’s mayor is answerable, and elected Inexperienced Get together deputy chief. This summer season, he campaigned for the highest job, utilizing his profitable run for the celebration’s management to forged himself because the anti-Farage, whereas selling an method he dubs “eco populism.”

From left to proper: Inexperienced Get together chief Zack Polanski, Philip Might and Hugh O’Leary attend the Remembrance Sunday ceremony on the Cenotaph on Whitehall in central London on November 9, 2025. (HENRY NICHOLLS / POOL / AFP) Polanski’s technique makes good electoral sense. On the final normal election, the Greens got here in second for 40 parliamentary seats; all of them are held by Labour and most within the celebration’s city, graduate-heavy strongholds, together with London, Manchester, Leeds and Merseyside.

A radical agenda If not totally absent, the Greens’ conventional pitch on local weather change has been relegated to the backseat. As an alternative, Polanski has adopted a message which mixes class warfare and ultra-progressivism , arguing: “There isn't a environmental justice with out racial, social and financial justice.”

Wealth and inequality, not local weather change, have been the centrepiece of his address to the Inexperienced Get together’s annual convention in October. Claiming that the UK is a rustic the place “a tiny few have taken our energy, our wealth,” he declared it's “time to take it again,” by introducing a wealth tax on the “tremendous wealthy” and ending the “failed experiment” of privatization. The Greens need to nationalize the utility corporations, establish a state-owned housebuilder and cap high salaries . “We don’t must tax and spend,” Polanski told the BBC in September. “We have to spend and tax.”

At a time when public concern about immigration tops the polls , Polanski is “unapologetically very pro-migration.” And, putting himself entrance and middle of Britain’s tradition wars, he described the Supreme Court docket’s landmark ruling this spring, which outlined girls by their organic intercourse quite than their gender id, as “thinly veiled transphobia” and pledged to “assist our trans siblings unconditionally.”

UK Inexperienced Get together chief Zack Polanski in 2022. (Rob Browne/ Public area) Polanski opposes the federal government’s improve in protection spending (the Greens have lengthy opposed Britain’s unbiased nuclear deterrent) and toyed with the UK leaving NATO in the course of the management marketing campaign. Final month, he sparked an incredulous response from a TV interviewer when he mentioned he would ask the Russian president to surrender his nuclear weapons.

Whereas Polanski terms Farage a “Trump-loving, tax-avoiding, science-denying, NHS-dismantling company stooge,” Starmer’s Labour is the principle focus of his assaults. “When Farage says soar, Labour [says] ‘how excessive,’” he says , accusing Starmer of “[creating] the circumstances for the far proper to rise” by “defending the wealth and energy of the tremendous wealthy.”

However it's Labour’s supposed assist for Israel which has most provoked Polanski’s ire. In his keynote speech to the Inexperienced convention in October, the celebration’s new chief made no point out of Iran, China or Russia — the one point out of Ukraine was a passing reference to his Jewish ancestry — whereas devoting a number of passages to Gaza.

After assailing Israel’s “mass slaughter” and “genocide” in Palestine, he railed towards Starmer’s authorities, which he labeled “an lively participant within the murdering of the Palestinians.” Polanski went on to reiterate the Greens’ calls for an entire arms embargo on Israel, an finish to intelligence sharing and a lifting of the ban on the extremist group Palestine Motion.

Polanski, who has repeatedly called for the arrest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and condemned Israel’s “horrendous and unlawful” airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile packages in June, says he grew up in a “very Zionist” family and was raised to consider the Jewish state was “the middle of every little thing” and “have to be defended in any respect prices.” However “Israel has modified,” claims Polanski, who says he's “definitely not a Zionist.”

A protester takes half in an indication in assist of Palestine Motion, exterior the Royal Courts of Justice, Britain’s Excessive Court docket, in central London on November 26, 2025. (CARLOS JASSO / AFP) As he has adopted a extra hardline place on Israel, Polanski additionally seems to have shifted his stance on what he considers to be antisemitism. He has recanted his previous criticism of the antisemitism scandal which roiled Labour beneath Starmer’s hard-left predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn. He now claims it was “blatantly not true” that the celebration had been “rife” with antisemitism and that he had been mistaken to criticize it.

Polanski’s anti-Zionist stance doesn’t characterize a radical break with the Greens’ historic hostility in the direction of the Jewish state.

Polanski’s response to media revelations about antisemitism throughout the Inexperienced Get together throughout final yr’s normal election was to warn towards “the conflation between reputable criticism of the Israeli authorities and antisemitism” whereas accusing different events of “weaponizing” the problem.

As Polanski has acknowledged , progressive voters’ perception that Labour has not been robust sufficient on Israel has gained the Greens further assist.

However Polanski’s anti-Zionist stance doesn’t characterize a radical break with the Greens’ historic hostility in the direction of the Jewish state. In keeping with Dr. James Vaughan, an knowledgeable in UK-Israel relations on the College of Aberystwyth’s division of worldwide politics, way back to 1990, a senior Inexperienced Get together member was reportedly arguing that there was “no Inexperienced justification for Israel’s existence in any respect.” Nicely over a decade in the past, a report commissioned by the Inexperienced Get together Regional Council expressed concern a few tendency for anti-Israeli activism to slip in the direction of a tolerance for low-level antisemitism.

Protesters maintain an anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian banner exterior a BBC broadcast of an occasion that includes the Inexperienced Get together and anti-immigration Reform UK celebration in Birmingham, England, on June 28, 2024. (Peter Byrne / POOL / AFP) “In that sense, the positioning of the Inexperienced Get together beneath Polanski’s management isn’t particularly new, it's merely working in a way more favorable political local weather the place beforehand marginal views concerning the illegitimacy of Zionism have gotten extra extensively accepted and normalized,” says Vaughan.

Polanski’s model of politics is grabbing as a lot, if no more, consideration because the substance of his insurance policies. Articulate, charming and personable, he delivers his message with out the air of menace and ethical superiority that has historically restricted the electoral enchantment of the onerous left. His hyperactive and social media-savvy model of management is already bearing fruit. Polanski has over 100,000 followers on TikTok (double that of Starmer) and 500,000 on Instagram. Shortly after profitable the Inexperienced management, he launched his personal weekly podcast, “Daring Politics.”

Beneath the brand new slogan ‘make hope regular once more,’ the Greens’ membership has risen from beneath 70,000 earlier this yr to 184,000 in December — overtaking each the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives.

Beneath the brand new slogan “make hope regular once more,” the Greens’ membership has risen from beneath 70,000 earlier this yr to 184,000 in December — overtaking each the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives — and the celebration is polling increased than ever earlier than, with some surveys displaying it pulling degree with Labour. Polling in October indicated that 15% of those who backed Labour final July now say they may change to the Greens. The polls also show the Greens gaining strongly in London, a Labour stronghold, and beating Starmer’s celebration amongst younger folks by 25 factors.

Prof. Glen O’Hara, a professor of contemporary and modern historical past at Oxford Brookes College, phrases Polanski “probably the most harmful opponent Labour has confronted on its left flank for many years.”

“Polanski is a talented operator who tells liberal, outward-looking Britain precisely what it needs to listen to. On authorities spending, immigration, public providers and the like, he speaks precisely the language of the progressive center courses, disillusioned by Starmer’s flip in the direction of placating Reform UK voters,” says O’Hara. “Polanski’s already began to average his left-wing language to some extent, in order to widen his enchantment.”

The Your Get together farce Polanski has additionally efficiently blunted Corbyn’s hopes to capitalize on Labour’s unpopularity by offering a brand new political dwelling for left-wing Britons.

Polanski, who has beforehand mentioned he would welcome Corbyn into the Greens’ ranks, has been helped by the chaotic launch of Corbyn’s socialist Your Get together and bitter squabbling amongst its founding members.

Corbyn, who was kicked out of Labour by Starmer following a scandal over antisemitism in the party under his watch and reelected to parliament final July as an unbiased, started making his preliminary strikes to kind a brand new left-wing celebration earlier this summer season. He shortly succeeded in profitable the backing of the Impartial Alliance, a grouping of pro-Gaza MPs who seized 4 closely Muslim seats from Labour on the normal election.

Jeremy Corbyn, middle, with different supporters of prisoners being held on costs associated to the banned Palestine Motion group, in London on December 18, 2025. (Henry NICHOLLS / AFP) However relations between Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, a younger Muslim MP who shares his far-left, anti-Israel politics, have been strained from the outset. First elected to the Home of Commons in 2019, Sultana was suspended from the parliamentary Labour Get together shortly after the overall election for rebelling towards the brand new authorities in a vote on welfare insurance policies.

Having formally resigned her Labour membership in July, Sultana immediately declared she was launching a brand new celebration with Corbyn. The announcement appeared to take Corbyn unexpectedly, and he instantly signalled his irritation. When the celebration’s web site was formally launched a number of weeks later, the pair couldn’t even agree on a reputation. Corbyn referred to it as “Your Get together,” whereas Sultana said that wouldn’t be the brand new entity’s title and that she most popular “the Left Get together.” The choice was deferred with an settlement that members would vote on the celebration’s new title at an inaugural convention within the autumn. (They selected to stay with Your Get together).

Your Get together is a coalition of far-left factions and egos who can’t cease preventing one another.

The notion that Your Get together had descended into the realms of political farce was compounded in September when, simply as Polanski was gaining momentum following his election as chief, Corbyn and Sultana started a new squabble over the launch of its membership portal. Sultana claimed the brand new celebration was being run as a “sexist boys’ membership,” whereas Corbyn said he was in search of authorized recommendation.

A more substantive clash throughout the celebration over the problem of trans rights got here after Adnan Hussain, one of many pro-Gaza unbiased MPs who had joined Your Get together, mentioned that “girls’s rights and secure areas shouldn't be encroached upon.” Sultana, a robust supporter of trans rights, hit again, saying: “Trans rights are human rights. Your Get together will defend them — no ifs, no buts.”

MP Zarah Sultana arrives for an interview with the BBC in London on July 21, 2024. (Photograph by BENJAMIN CREMEL / AFP) Hussain later give up the celebration, blaming “persistent infighting” and alleging prejudice in the direction of Muslim MPs throughout the group. Days later, one other of the pro-Gaza MPs, Iqbal Mohamed, adopted Hussain out of the door, citing “false allegations and smears made towards me and others.”

Nor did issues enhance when Your Get together’s launch convention on the finish of final month started with the expulsion of a number of members who have been discovered to even be members of different far-left events, together with the Socialist Staff Get together. Whereas Corbyn opened the occasion with a name for “unity” and led a chant of “free, free Palestine,” Sultana — who boycotted the opening day — railed towards “a tradition of witch-hunts” in Your Get together, which had led to “bullying, intimidation and smears,” and “acts of deliberate sabotage.” The celebration additionally voted to not have a single chief, however to have a collective management, with a chairperson drawn from exterior parliament.

“Your Get together is a coalition of far-left factions and egos who can’t cease preventing one another,” says Alex Hearn, director of the marketing campaign group Labour Towards Antisemitism. “Voters have watched them botch every little thing from information administration to their very own celebration title.”

Jeremy Corbyn delivers a speech on the primary day of the Founding Convention for Your Get together in Liverpool, England, on November 29, 2025. (Darren Staples / AFP) Nonetheless, Hearn says, “the chaos goes deeper than organizational incompetence.”

“They’re attempting to carry collectively an not possible alliance of hard-left activists, socially conservative Muslims and campaigners on topics akin to trans rights,” he says. “Past Gaza, they’re worlds aside.”

However Polanski hasn’t cornered the political house to Labour’s left merely because of Your Get together’s failings.

“The Greens know precisely what they stand for,” Hearn says. “United behind a charismatic populist who understands messaging, the local weather emergency has taken a again seat in comparison with ‘the genocide in Gaza.’ They’ve repositioned themselves as Labour’s socialist various, with Polanski’s populist enchantment to the left mirroring Reform’s enchantment to the appropriate.”