LONDON — Green leader Zack Polanski is fighting the battle of his political life — and the lines for failure are already being prepped. Voters in Holborn and St Pancras will head to the polls next Thursday to replace Keir Starmer, the former prime minister who quit Parliament, with a new MP. Polanski, the leader of the left-wing populist Green Party, is seeking to kickstart his party's stalled momentum by grabbing the seat, which has been held by Labour since its creation in 1983.
But even Polanski's closest allies admit his decision to stand here is a “high risk, high reward” strategy. The vote comes just days after new Prime Minister Andy Burnham cheered his center-left party with a shift onto ground the Greens have long occupied. Ahead of the Green Party's own conference — which kicks off in Brighton on Friday — senior party figures are already laying the groundwork in case Polanski's gamble fails to pay off.
Half a dozen of the 15 Green officials, politicians and activists POLITICO spoke to for this piece — some of whom were granted anonymity to discuss internal party discussions — pointed out that Reform leader Nigel Farage lost seven parliamentary elections before making it to the House of Commons. It’s a point which has also been made by Polanski himself. When the news broke that Starmer was stepping down as an MP in early September, members of the Green Party Executive Committee (GPEx) and the party leadership hurriedly jumped onto an online call to decide whether they would throw national resources — money and manpower — at the battle.
This is one of those big battles,” they added. Polanski had already been sounding out his allies and advisers about whether he should put himself up for selection as the candidate via WhatsApp. The Green Party staff team were more hesitant, but those closest to him gave him the thumbs-up, according to the Green politician quoted above.
There is no “route to victory” without the Green leader as the candidate, said Russell Warfield, a close ally of Polanski, and author of “The Green Socialist” — a book about the Green leader's political rise. But also, if he didn’t run, people would accuse him of bottling it,” said one London Green councilor. The departure from the field of Andrew Feinstein — the independent candidate who came second to Starmer with 18.9% of the vote in 2024 — cemented Polanski's decision to stand.
The former Holborn and St Pancras candidate was road-tripping from Portugal to Spain when news of Starmer's departure broke. When he stopped driving, he had 780 messages asking what he was going to do. He also had a missed call from Polanski.
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