Zack Polanski: defeated by the Burnham honeymoon

The Greens brought down Starmer - and the new PM is lovebombing progressive voters

When Zack Polanski announced he was standing in the Holborn and St. Pancras by-election, I called it “hugely courageous”.

“It’s the Burnham honeymoon,” I wrote, “so obviously it’s a challenge.”

Cut out all the noise, and that is why Zack Polanski lost his by-election challenge to Labour.

Under his leadership, the Green Party adopted an uncompromisingly left-populist platform.

That was in the context of Keir Starmer’s Labour government defining itself against the left. It abolished the universal winter fuel payment, attacked disability benefits, cracked down on migrants, and slashed overseas aid. Starmer had backed Israel’s right to commit war crimes, failed to take proper action against a genocide, and proscribed Palestine Action, leading to thousands of arrests of people for holding placards, many of them elderly.

Repulsed voters flocked to the Greens. In February’s Gorton and Denton by-election, the party won a huge victory, leaving Labour in the third place. Labour MPs briefed that defeat was “existential”. The Greens’ polling breached 20%, and exceeded that of Labour in some polls. In the local elections, Labour lost four times as many votes to the Greens as Reform.

Labour MPs felt the same sort of panic Tory MPs did back in 2019: in their case, because of the Nigel Farage threat. That’s why they made Boris Johnson prime minister, despite their misgivings.

The result: Starmer was driven out of office and replaced by Andy Burnham. Now we had a prime minister who spoke of ending four decades of neoliberalism, declaring that the wrong turns Britain had taken were: “Deindustrialisation, deregulation, privatisation, austerity, Brexit.” Other than Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, Labour’s rhetoric is more left-wing than any point since the 1980s.

Burnham apologised over Gaza. The government imposed sanctions against Israel’s illegal settlements and the new Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, told those who had protested against Israel: “You were right”.

This isn’t anywhere near enough action on Israel. And as I’ve written, the overall rhetoric is one thing - but what about the substance? What will happen when the government does its Budget? But the fact is Burnham has thrown everything at trying to woo back progressive voters - because his team understood that Labour taking its progressive base for granted was no longer tenable.

Despite everything, the fact the Greens were even in contention for Holborn and St. Pancras speaks to the transformation of the party’s fortunes, even if they have declined from this year’s peak. The Greens won 32.8%, up from 10.8% at the general election. Yes, there was the candidacy of left-wing independent Andrew Feinstein last time, who chalked up 18.9% - but you can’t actually just neatly shift all voters from an independent column to another political party. In any case, that’s still a 5 point increase if you did just crudely combine the two votes.

As I noted when he stood, Holborn and St. Pancras is not actually as fertile as other inner London seats. Yes, like most urban seats, it has larger numbers of younger and minority voters. But as pollster Steve Akehurst notes, it’s a seat with lots of voters who are both financially secure and socially progressive. The Greens’ main targets are financially insecure and socially progressive. If this was, say, Hackney, then I think Polanski would have won.

Yes, this all means that the Greens are not on course to “replace Labour”, as Polanski suggested in the party’s headier days. It does mean they could win a couple of dozen seats under first past the post, permanently establishing them as a political force and giving them the foundation to grow much further. In a hung Parliament, that could give them huge influence.

And that’s without considering two factors. What happens when the Burnham honeymoon ends? What happens when neoliberalism is not in fact ended, and a reluctance to hike taxes on the booming rich means there isn’t the public investment the country desperately needs? What happens when Israel’s genocidal rampage continues - and the government is not imposing sweeping sanctions and ending its alliance with the state?

And what if Burnham delivers on his promise to introduce electoral reform, allowing those who would vote Green but fear letting in the Tories or Reform can now act on their conscience? The Greens really would become a permanent electoral force.

Yes, Labour will be crowing. Let them! I mean it. Their hubris is what drove the Green surge in the first place.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t warnings for the Greens. The party needs an outward-facing brand of sunny left-populism, of the sort of Zohran Mamdani exemplifies. Some activists believe in an ultra-revolutionary posture, believing the electorate will be radicalised by a revealed truth. This approach played a key role in wrecking Your Party. There are no shortages of sects which adopt such a posture, and they never get anywhere.

Polanski should also consider embracing Mamdani’s approach to social media. That means a focus on slick, optimistic, funny videos communicating his message - tackling the cost of living crisis by confronting the elites. Bombarding users with lots of reposts drowns out his message on a crucial medium - and offers the media ammunition, as we’ve seen.

But Polanski has transformed the Greens’ fortunes. For most of its existence, the party was a nice genteel middle-class party - which was utterly irrelevant. Commentators who profess nostalgia for this period simply want to return to the days when the Greens did not exert left-wing influence in politics, ensuring that pressure only came from the right.

It is now a party of well over 200,000 members which has a shot at winning a significant number of seats, and which is breathing down the neck of Labour MPs in many of them.

Nigel Farage stood for parliament seven times before he was finally elected. The Greens surged quicker and with more immediate political consequence than UKIP did. Yes, different standards are applied to the Greens, because the media is largely right-wing and does not regard the left as legitimate political actors. That doesn’t change the actual reality!

This will be a tough period, because of Burnham’s honeymoon, the internal acrimony, the shadow of this defeat, and the media pile-on. But the fundamentals will reassert themselves if Burnham cannot deliver on his rhetoric. The Greens should have discipline, suck it up, zone in on an effective populist message - and be patient.