A surge in membership levels is causing the Green party some novel problems. “Our local association went from 400 to over 1,000,” one activist said. “We had meetings booked in rooms with a capacity of 50, and loads of people were being turned away. We’ve had to start booking bigger rooms.”
The Greens have long been a party on the rise. But it is fair to say that in the near-seven weeks since Zack Polanski took over the leadership in England and Wales, things have gone to another level.
The most obvious metric is membership. Since Polanski won the leadership race, routing the more established MP duo of Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns, numbers have doubled from 70,000 to more than 140,000, overtaking first the Liberal Democrats and then the Conservatives.
Polling figures have been less dramatic. But even here there are signs of progress, with one survey putting the Greens as high as 15%.
Although Polanski was an overwhelming winner of the vote among members, getting nearly 85% support, there had been doubts among some senior Greens. Yes, they agreed, he was articulate and an able media performer. But would his brand of openly radical “eco populism” risk fracturing the party’s often broad coalition of supporters?
To an extent, that remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: even those who were Polanski sceptics are impressed.
“He’s doing really well so far,” said a senior party figure who had backed Ramsay and Chowns. “He might go a bit off piste at times with opinions – no one needs to know what he thinks about Nato membership – but he is very energetic and engaging.
“There is a worry about how well it will land in rural constituencies but you can’t argue with the membership or polling numbers.”
Polanski’s pitch to the membership was that he would revitalise the party and get it noticed, promising to shake up the arguably staid and slightly cautious approach under the previous leadership duo of Ramsay and Carla Denyer, another of the party’s four MPs.
He has delivered on both fronts. Two days after he became leader, Polanski said he had carried out 61 media interviews and the pace has barely slackened. “It’s like he has never been off the TV since he was elected,” a senior party figure said. “He has gone out and absolutely hammered our message across.”
With this has come a Polanski-fronted podcast, regularly in the UK top 10 for political podcasts, and a sequence of low-budget but much-viewed social media videos. One, with the self-explanatory title, Let’s Make Hope Normal Again, has been viewed 11m times on X.
Zack Polanski (centre) is congratulated on his victory by leadership rival Ellie Chowns, who ran on a ticket with Adrian Ramsay (right). Former co-leader Carla Denyer is on the left. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images
Green activists say this has been important not just in getting airtime but also pushing the message about what the party stands for beyond environmental issues, including Polanski’s emphasis on a wealth tax.
This has brought with it a strikingly focused and unified party, particularly given the Greens’ often freewheeling ways. Polanski recounts being told by journalists at the party’s conference a few weeks ago that they had a brief to uncover splits and discontent but could not.
There is, of course, an extent to which social media metrics, enthusiasm and even a large activist base might get you only so far, as shown by Labour’s 500,000-strong membership under Jeremy Corbyn.
The first major test will come in elections for councils across England next May, as well as for the Welsh Senedd, where the Greens hope to win their first seat or seats.
At the top of the party there is private acknowledgment that members – and the media – expect results. “There is almost some nervousness about how high expectations are,” said one source. “If we do as well as we think we can in May, there might be a real task to manage them.”
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What is clear is the potential threat to Labour. London’s 32 boroughs re-elect all their councillors in May and senior Labour figures in the capital talk gloomily about losing outer boroughs to Reform, while the Greens take numerous seats and potentially even an entire council, such as Hackney, nearer the centre.
This could be a rehearsal for the next general election. Last year, Denyer overturned a near-30,000 Labour majority to win Bristol Central and numerous other Labour MPs in urban seats are nervous.
While the Greens collect limited data on the background of new members, some do seem to have come from Labour and one leap in numbers followed the internal ructions of Corbyn’s still-embryonic Your party.
“Polanski has accelerated a trend,” said Robert Ford, professor of politics at Manchester University. “One of the sleeper stories of electoral politics in the past few years has been the steady advance of the Greens in local government.
“Cumulatively, that means they’ve got a lot of councillors and a lot of local election experience. And now they have a telegenic, grab-the-mic type of leader who’s getting himself into the political conversation in a way that none of his predecessors managed to the same extent. Polanski is clearly a savvy native of the kind of media ecosystem we have now, because he’s popping up on my feeds constantly. I don’t think I saw Adrian Ramsay once.”
Ford said a sharply increased membership was also not to be discounted: “Bodies on the ground is one of the great constraints for all parties in British politics. Extra members do make an incremental difference, particularly in the kinds of places where the Greens have been thriving, often places with a lot of relatively poor, relatively young voters who don’t engage with politics automatically.”
It is still unclear how this will play out electorally in rural areas, where the Greens have two of their four Commons seats, held by Ramsay and Chowns. During the leadership battle they warned that Polanksi’s approach might undermine the party’s broad appeal.
So far, however, this doesn’t seem to be happening. One activist in North Shropshire said their local party had grown by 50% since Polanski took over.
An organiser in another rural seat said they had been sent only “one or two emails” expressing doubt about Polanski. “Even if some people do object, the numbers speak for themselves,” they said. “Yes, there are still a tiny handful of people saying they are still not sure about Zack. But that’s literally it. Far more are excited.”
