Polanski vows to stay on as Green leader as criticism mounts
Jewish Greens' leader has said Polanski should resign in the wake of a Zionism row and by-election defeat.
By BBC News
Zack Polanski has vowed to remain leader of the Green Party despite calls for him to resign following a by-election defeat and a row over Zionism.
Vivien Lichtenstein, leader of the Jewish Greens, said Mr Polanski “should resign”. She described his decision to avoid a debate on a Green Party conference motion declaring Zionism a form of racism as a “big mistake”.
The motion was passed at the party’s conference, prompting criticism from Jewish members and external organisations. The European Green Party, the Jewish Leadership Council and the Board of Deputies of British Jews were among those to condemn the decision.
Mr Polanski, who is Jewish, missed the vote while campaigning in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election. He later said he had grown up in a Zionist household but no longer believed the idea that the area was “a land without a people and a people without a land”.
Speaking after the result, he said nobody would be excluded from the Green Party because of their faith or religion.
Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali won the by-election, taking 45% of the vote. Mr Polanski finished second with 33%, although the Green Party’s share increased by 22 percentage points compared with the 2024 general election.
Asked whether he would step down, Mr Polanski told BBC Breakfast that he would “absolutely” continue as Green leader.
The party’s next scheduled leadership ballot is due in summer 2027, when members will decide whether to re-elect him if he remains in post until then.