There is no question that media-friendly, actor, ex-hypnotherapist from Harley street and fluent Zack Polanski is well on his way to achieve his aims to “pick some fights” and “take the party’s bold vision of social and environmental justice up a gear”. In the year ahead, he may indeed become the Nigel Farage of the left.
Polanski’s unique leadership style and the Identity Politics ideology he lives by and promotes, coupled with his boundless energy, clever use of language and some of his own political agenda are contributing to the huge increase in the Party’s membership and have attracted an unprecedented level of attention from the main media.
His genuine support for the Palestinians’ cause, the plight of immigrants crossing the Channel and his campaign for making billionaires pay their fair share of tax are indeed powerful messages taking the Party’s vision higher up in people’s minds.
However, keen observers of his interviews conducted during his election campaign and since will have noted that our ‘eco populist’ Leader resorts to text-book Critical Theory responses when confonted with searching questions which require more reasoned and evidence-based responses.
When his wiring can’t quite cope with offering such reasoned response, and his otherwise gift of the gab temporarily veers into rethorical incoherence, he will jump about and seek to change subject.
And if that does not quite work, he will just morph into being the victim – or poses as the defender of oppressed minorites – and turns the tables on his adversaries with interruptions and a barrage of accusations of their speaking from “a position of privilege”.
Being gay and Jewish, thus ticking not one, but two oppressed minorities boxes, Polanski has also developed a singularly powerful armour to protect himself from political challenges with his own and simplistic world view where there can only be “good” people and “bad” people.
And as 40 members still in Exile know only too well, the punishment for “bad” people is expulsion.
What was disconcerting during the Leadership election campaign, given how highly educated both Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns are and how confident they have become since elected as Green MPs, was to see them getting untangled into Polanski’s linguistic verbiage and guilt trap and occasionally succeeding to shame them into silence. Sadly, neither seemed to have been aware of the ticks used by Critical Theory zealots and how they were manipulated.
The Green Light blog’s mission is to ‘illuminate’ what unites us as well as what divides us; so, here is a brief summary of how Zack Polanski ‘s “radical step into the unknown”, as described by Guardian commentator Peter Walker, came about.
The Green Party’s ‘capture’ started in 2016 with the adoption of Aimee Challenor’s motion “Recognizing Trans Rights “.
When Polanski joined the Party in 2017 and as evidenced in Part Two of The Green Light Identity Politics time line here, the Party was firmly on track to become the second critical theories champion – or ‘woke’ Party – in the UK, the first one being the transgender Scottish Greens.
With the active support of the Party’s LGBTIQA+ Special Interest Group, Polanski was elected to serve on the London Assembly in 2021. He soon rose to the rank of chair of the Environment Committee.
A year later, he won the internal election for the role of Deputy Leader of the Green Party where he famously compared his ideological rival and former Deputy Leader Dr Shahrar Ali to Hitler. It is during this contest which coincided with the election for the Executive that every candidate was asked by Polanski’s followers to respond with 2 words only ” Yes ” or ” No ” to the question: “are transwomen women ? “. No one dared say ” No” for fear of retribution. True to this beliefs, Dr Ali ‘s reply was ” Yes, if gender”.
A key moment in the capture of the Party’s Executive, the Regional Council, the Standing Orders and Disciplinary Commitee, 2022 was the year when the existence of an organised national Identity Politics network of activists on the march came out of the shadows. Riding on the wave of the march which saw the creation of three Common Interest groups: the ‘inclusive’ Feminist Greens, the Muslim Greens, Global Majority Greens and Greens Organise, Polanski never looked back.
There is no doubt that Zack Polanski’s winning the leadership of the Green Party of England and Wales marked the completion of the Critical Theory ‘social justice’ long journey in the taking control of the Party’s ideological narrative and instruments governance, including its key policy decision making process: Conference.
And if anyone remains unconvinced as to the threat identity politics driven eco populism poses to the future of the Green Party, may be this chilling quote from an article by Open Democracy journalist Adam Ramsay – from the Scottish Greens and long standing close ally of Polanski – will.
This was published on the 2nd September 2025, the very same day the result of Polanki’s Leadership election was officially announced.
“A similar notable feature of this campaign – which points to the same generational shift – was the absence of any vocally anti-trans candidate for either leader or deputy. Adrian Ramsay was rightly criticised for his equivocations on the subject, but no one expressed the sort of angry gender-critical politics that represented a significant minority faction until recently. And, across the wider elections for the party’s executive, everyone seen as associated with anti-trans ideas was defeated. Over the last two years, action has been taken to expel anti-trans bullies and bigots, and while that’s sometimes been controversial – even for those who aren’t gender-critical – it’s worked. The terf wars in the Green Party are over, for now. The intersectional feminists are in charge “.
And finally, we leave you with three quotes from the same article to reflect upon for the New Year !
“10 years ago, the oldest millennials were still young. Now we are in our 40s“.
“Many Polanski-backing millennial socialists have been members for two decades”.
“We’re the old guard now, too“.
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The Green Light 