Between the Movement and the Mainstream: An Interview With Zack Polanski

Movement radicals Jonas Marvin and Shanice McBean interview Green Party leadership hopeful Zack Polanski.

We didn’t have the means of production to give you a studio-quality interview, and tech issues meant we couldn’t deliver this as a single video. But while our journalistic approach wasn’t high-tech, we hope you’ll get something from the depth and variety of the topics we covered. Hoping to really understand who Zack Polanski is politically, we touch on everything from capitalism and visions of the good life, to identity politics and Zionism. At the end we give our thoughts on the interview, Zack’s leadership bid, and where next for the left.

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The Green Party Leadership Campaign

Jonas: I'm aware it’s pretty early on in quite an extensive leadership campaign, and there is limited polling data publicly available at the minute. So we wanted to start by getting a sense from you how the campaign's going so far?

Zack: Without any complacency at all, and that's the huge caveat, it's going super well. We're getting much more media coverage than the Green Party normally gets: I think you're something like my 30th interview, and that includes a lot of national press. They're not normally what I obsess on, but they're always a good signature.

Much more importantly, the membership is very clearly growing. Every few hours I see another message to say “just joined the Green Party, can't wait to vote for you.” People of colour are saying they see themselves in the Green Party for the first time; they can hear that I'm talking about the issues they wish the Green Party had been talking about for a long time. I could argue the Green Party always had a philosophical basis that is grounded in environmental, social, racial and economic justice, but I think it's also true to say the party hasn’t succeeded in breaking through and letting people know.

There’s a frame in this leadership race that I only care about the ‘other stuff’, and don't care about nature and the environment. The environment's super important. Nature is super important. It underpins everything. But the same things destroying nature, the same things destroying our environment - neoliberalism, capitalism that's totally out of control, corporations - are destroying our democracies, and destroying our communities. All of these things are interconnected. So to come back to your question, how's the campaign going? I'm fired up and ready to go, but it's still a long way to go, and actually, I don't want any complacency, either from me or from anyone who supports me.

Labour Movement and Trade Unions

Jonas: I want to pivot to strategy; for the Greens and for your leadership campaign. The Greens don't have the kind of institutional connection to the labour movement that the Labour Party can claim to have - although obviously there are all sorts of things that you can say about that relationship and how it's been hollowed out over the course of the last 30 years. Yet, you want to build a populist movement that can build power. How do you navigate those contradictions?

Zack: I remember a moment a couple of years ago when I was supporting strikes and joining picket lines, and then being on an evening show with Luciana Berger and her saying ‘come on, you know that's not serious politics’. This is what Keir Starmer said too. ‘Don't stand on picket lines - we get power and get things done’. I can think of little more important than being a politician and standing side by side with the people most affected by the consequences of austerity, the consequences of anti-trade union laws; and not just recent ones, but going all the way back to the 1970s.

No matter if you're an insurgent political party, you're a government in waiting, or a government, it's still so important you spend time with workers: whether that's on a picket line, going to community events, or workplaces to say ‘let's have a conversation’. It's really striking seeing Keir Starmer do an anti-Nigel Farage speech at a workplace, but the workers couldn’t be more physically distant from where he was speaking. I'm not saying optics is everything but we know he was terrified to be anywhere close to those workers, in case one of them heckled him, or actually said what they wanted to say.

On the bigger trade unions, I'm really keen to keep talking to them, but I'm also really interested in the smaller trade unions, like United Voices of the World. They're a small migrant union who are largely based in London, but will support migrants anywhere. I've done lots of work with them, and actually, of all the work I've done as a politician, that work is probably what I'm proudest of. Last year I met with a group of South American cleaners who were organising around sexual harassment. When they fought back against sexual harassment, unsurprisingly, they didn’t get booked on the rota again. So not only are they fighting against poverty. They're also fighting for political representation and the ability to be able to speak against one of the most heinous crimes you can imagine. To be working with trade unions who are actually representing what their workers want, and having a party who are aligned and able to say ‘we want these things too let's work together’, I think is a major first step.

I'm not knocking the bigger trade unions, but there is a bigger challenge there. It's interesting because we're seeing some of this power dynamic in the Green Party right now. You have the establishment along with former MPs saying let's go for steady-as-we-go, it's fine to have incremental change. I really believe I'm representing the vast majority of the membership who are actually saying steady change is not going to cut it in the face of the far right. And actually what we need right now is a major acceleration where we are going to speak truth to power. Where we’re going to take on fights, even though it's going to be difficult, even though the right wing press will throw everything they're going to throw at us. We have to be strong in our resolve. That will also build our grassroots movement. And I think we're seeing that in the trade union movement too, this kind of old establishment power that wants to cling to the Labour Party, but workers within the trade union who are frequently saying ‘you're not actually representing us at this point, and we will look to different leadership’. So I think that's a really interesting dynamic.

NATO

Immigration and Identity Politics

Shanice: Pivoting to some of the contentious political topics on the left: Keir Starmer made a reactionary speech on migration, echoing Enoch Powell. It’s fed into the sense it's taboo for politicians to ‘go woke’, and support anti-racist justice; this position is more dominant now than it's ever been. It's not only taboo in the centre and on the right, but the left-wing pundit class also say don't ‘go woke’. But your message is to defend social justice. So as an aspiring populist how will you sell your vision in this hostile environment?

Zack: I've got two answers here. One is on immigration. But the second is about identity politics, which is much more complicated and nuanced. On immigration: Keir Starmer’s comments must be condemned in the strongest possible terms. This was not a slight nudge to the right. This was a full foghorn of fascist and racist politics. He didn't even have the audacity to say it straight with his chest and say ‘I am willing to sell out millions of people in this country, whether they’re people seeking asylum, whether they’re economic migrants’ or, let's face it, whether they're just people of colour. He was willing to throw them under the bus because he wanted to send a little whisper to the far right.

For me populism is about saying we are all being screwed over, including myself, including you guys too, by the mass inequality in our society, by the 1% of multi-millionaires and billionaires who we need to tax more. The solutions I'm presenting are the solutions that will lower people's bills, give people a better standard of life, and also unite the 99% against the 1% - and that includes migrants. Workers versus migrants is an absolutely absurd frame. Obviously, a lot of workers are migrants is the first point. But the idea that they're the problem, as opposed to fourteen years of cuts, plus austerity before that under Blair and Thatcher. Thatcher said Blair was her greatest legacy. What would she have thought of Starmer?

The problem is not building enough houses. The problem is screwing over a national health service and privatising it, rather than making sure everyone can get an appointment. The problem is not building proper public infrastructure so people can get around. The problem is subsidising private jets rather than public trains. All of those arguments can absolutely be made if politicians are brave enough to make them. I say brave enough. It's not even about bravery, because it's just correct.

On identity politics. I think the reason why I'm split is it depends on who's making the argument. I have a lot of sympathy for Ash Sarkar’s argument in Minority Rule that the liberals, right, and centre have captured and seized identity politics in order to push neoliberalism. Kamala Harris is a really good example. They took a woman of colour, pushed her to the front, AOC said they were working tirelessly to stop the genocide in Gaza. At the same time, we could see that they were still arming Israel. This was an example of using the identity of one person to try and erase and dehumanise Palestinians. We see that constantly throughout politics. Kemi Badenoch, leader of a Conservative Party, is free in the eyes of the media to go out and say whatever she wants about marginalised or Black communities because they'll go ‘well, she's Black, she couldn't possibly be racist’. At the same time, I don't agree with everything Ash says, but I think at least she’s being more nuanced.

It's undoubtedly true that in all the data Black people, brown people, working class people, trans people, disabled people, are vastly disproportionately discriminated against. Whether that’s in terms of wages or how the police treat them. I think it's also undoubtedly true that in our communities, yes, we need to support and uplift white working class people, but you don't do that by throwing other marginalised communities under the bus. Marginalised communities you don't often hear about are Black working class populations, Asian working class populations or, frankly, LGBT working class populations: we know these people exist. We know homelessness exists disproportionately in all of those categories.

So this is not anti-woke: it's quite the opposite. Social justice has to be at the heart of everything, linking in with the environment. We know that it is empire, neo-colonialism, extractivism, that is destroying the Global South. So you can't talk about environmental justice or climate justice without recognising those deep, powerful imbalances between the super elite and the rich, and what is happening on the ground. And that's both on the national and global scale.

Look at our cities, incinerators are a really good example. You don't get incinerators in leafy, middle class suburbs. You get them on council estates where people don't have political representation to be able to speak up. Or in a first past the post system, they have a Labour councillor who doesn't care, or even if they do care, is not willing to challenge the whip because they'll lose their seat.

Shanice: I saw the interview that you did with Michael Walker, and he asked you if you were going to compromise on your politics to win Reform voters, you flatly said no. It's refreshing to see you put a line in the sand, both in terms of how you respond to the right, but also how you respond to people within our ranks.

Reform

Jonas: Around the 2024 election we organised an event in Stoke called ‘They Don't Represent Us’. Outside the event there was another meeting, and I was speaking to a guy who, a couple of days before the election, was still undecided between the Greens and Reform. Now obviously they’re very different political projects - but what does that tell you about the current moment and contemporary politics?

Zack: My caveat to what I’m going to say is when I think about where Green Party growth is going to come from, there are 39 seats where we came in second place to an increasingly unpopular Labour government. I think very obvious growth is challenging those Labour MPs and replacing them. I'm speaking to you from Hackney, Hackney is growing in terms of Green representation. We won a local council by-election in David Lammy’s constituency with over 50% of the vote. In Lambeth we won a recent by-election. That stuff is really, really obvious, but that's not the end of it, and nor can it be the end of it. The Conservatives can't stop Reform; if people want far right politics, they'll vote Reform. Labour can't stop Reform because they support austerity; they are the establishment.

So the Green Party is in a really unique position, and has a moral responsibility, to not just do the comfortable thing, which is to appeal to people on the left, people I agree with. But actually people who've never voted before and say ‘I've never registered to vote, because I've never seen that it can make a difference’ - I’d look to inspire those people to get involved: that's a winning combination.

But also, if you live in the countryside, inequality still hurts you. It hurts you in the same way as the young renter who needs rent controls. I've been thinking a lot about farmers for instance: a lot of them aren't even being paid minimum wage. 40% of farmers are tenants of a landlord who is not paying them a fair amount for their farm. These are deep inequalities: Reform can't make these arguments, because Reform wants to protect the wealth of the multi-millionaires and billionaires. Reform wants to scrap net zero but we know the majority of the country wants action on the climate crisis. We've not been willing to have a fight with Reform politicians and tell it how it is in the media.

So can we win over a Reform voter who's explicitly racist and just wants immigrants out of the country? No, and we're not going to change the party to do that. But I don't believe that's the majority of Reform voters. I believe the majority of Reform voters are feeling insecure, are feeling worried about the future of the planet, or more directly the future of their wages, the future of their living standards, and they're right to worry about that because the establishment are absolutely out to get them.

Reform are a party of millionaire MPs cosplaying as working class but serving the billionaires.

Criminalisation and Policing

Shanice: So I wrote a book about criminalisation and carcerality. In a talk Carla Denyer hosted last year she described the war on drugs as “a policy failure that disproportionately affects so many in our society”. And in an interview with Owen Jones, you described poverty as a big predictor of contact with the criminal justice system. My position is we can build a world where we don't need carcerality, and we don't need criminalisation. I'm wondering what your position on that is?

Zack: The war on drugs has absolutely failed. And if I said poverty is one of the biggest indicators of going into the criminal justice system, I should refine that: poverty is the biggest indicator of contact with the criminal justice system. To see Robert Jenrick trying to catch tube dodgers - people not paying their fares is clearly not okay - but he’s someone who's been a minister in a government that implemented austerity, who is now a shadow minister acting like some sort of vigilante policeman for clips on X, rather than actually dealing with systemic causes of poverty that will cause some people to have to tube dodge. No one wants to tube dodge, no mother wants to steal nappies or baby food. But poverty is pushing people into these decisions. When we talk about criminalisation, let's talk about poverty, because we are criminalising poverty and using that to create the idea that people have a bad moral character.

In terms of the war on drugs: cannabis, but actually all drugs, should be legalised and regulated. We’re pushing people into black markets, and pushing people into the criminal justice system, as opposed to recognising people will inevitably take drugs no matter what you do. Prohibition doesn't work. Isn't it much better if people are able to get support if they're dealing with the drugs problematically, and if they're dealing with them recreationally, why are we getting involved? People who rally against drugs never rally against alcohol or cigarettes, which are some of the worst or most destructive drugs for people's health. So they're clearly not making a health argument. They're making an argument that alcohol creates lots of money in revenue - but cannabis, frankly, could too. So why not get that money in tax?

To your wider question about carcerality - I should shout out Zoe Garbett who's my colleague on the London Assembly and has been doing loads of work on this. Zoe’s a really powerful voice because she used to work for the National Health Service. For someone who works in the National Health Service to be talking about legalising and regulating drugs from a health inequalities and poverty point of view is really powerful. There was a report out this week at London Drugs Commission that showed despite the fact that there is no difference between the amount of young white people and young Black people who smoke cannabis, young Black people are stopped and searched six times more, with ‘smell of cannabis’ being the issue, which then gets disguised as weapons. Is knife crime an issue? Yes, absolutely, it is an issue, but let's not pretend it's an issue under the cover of race, or under the cover of cannabis possession.

When I was an actor doing Theatre of the Oppressed, I worked in the prison system. If you were going to design a system that is less likely to be able to rehabilitate people and make people feel they are more part of society - and not try and punish them or separate them from society any more than you would do - then you would create the prison system that we have right now. It has totally and utterly failed, and that’s not just me saying that: we’ve run out of places in the prison system. So either the criminal justice system is going to have to look at itself and say ‘this is not working’ and build more prisons, which it can't afford to do, and also is deeply damaging to our system. Or, they're going to have to say it's time now to look at a different criminal justice system.

So it comes back to the wider context of this conversation. I'm not saying what you're saying is not radical. I think it is radical in today's context. But I think the very radical thing right now would be to say, everything's fine, let's just keep shoving people into a criminal justice system that's failing and is broken and is awaiting a ticking time bomb of a riot or some wider tragedy that is going to happen, or build more prisons that we can't afford to do under the government's own frame. I challenge the frame, but my first thing to do would not be to build more prisons.

Instead we can say let's look at what things we're criminalising in society, and how we're criminalising them, and how we are demonising people for crimes that should not even be crimes, where prevention would be a much better measure. And two, even where they are crimes - and we don't want people committing crimes in society - what does a preventative public health approach look like? What are the systemic issues in society that are creating these problems, that cannot be solved by more police officers? Because particularly minority communities are being under-protected and over-policed, and that is completely unsustainable and will create further tensions that we've seen in society.

So it's a huge conversation. I'm really glad that you're researching it, because we always need more research and data, but I think the principles of the current system are totally not working, and we need massive transformation. Anyone with any sense, ears, eyes or any kind of connection to real world reality, however they get their information, needs to change their position on this.

Palestine Solidarity and Zionism

Shanice: One of the social movements you'll be looking to relate to is Palestine solidarity. What do you want to say to the movement and how has your position on Zionism, Israel and imperialism changed over the years?

Zack: The genocide is a very obvious place to start. Stopping the genocide should be our united call. We know the public supports that, but on the other things I'm going to say we've got more of a job to do, and I think we need to show leadership in doing that - that's why I certainly talk about them. Stop the genocide through ending arm sales to Israel I think is a position that is growing in power and popularity every single day: the more we can use our platforms, whether that's through print media, whether that's broadcast media, whether that's on social media, that's the place to aim right now, because I believe we absolutely can stop the genocide.

More widely even when the genocide has stopped ending the occupation, ending the settlements, is clearly the next place to go, and we know that position is more contentious. That doesn't mean we should stop saying it, but I don't think we should allow the ‘stop the genocide’ position to be saturated by the next position that we need to get to. So I think it's about what are the pragmatic things that need to happen now, and where is the long-term vision of this conversation.

In terms of have my positions changed? I think they famously changed. For anyone who knows anything about me, I grew up in a Zionist household. I went to a Jewish school. I think it points to what happens when people are given propaganda over a long period of time and are never given an alternative truth - not an alternative truth - given the facts of what's actually happened.

I met with two former IDF soldiers from a group called Breaking the Silence, who had fought for the Israeli army, but want to speak out about what they saw and did because it was never morally conscionable, and they had bought into the propaganda at the time. I do think the left are always looking for traitors, always looking to blame people and point out people's previous positions. People are willing to have a go at me. I'm a politician in public life, that's what I've signed up to, and I'll take it, but I don't think it's helpful: we want to build a movement. Tony Benn, I think, said it best when he said, “Don't tell me where you've come from. Show me where you're going.” And I'm not talking about just excusing if people make mistakes, people should apologise for mistakes. But if people apologise, and then they're showing a demonstrated commitment over a period of time, as I believe I'm doing, but also I think lots of people are doing, then let's build them into a movement.

Sometimes people say I'm Jewish, so I shouldn't have a platform on this. That's antisemitic, and I will call that out. Just because my position has changed on Zionism doesn't mean I don't believe antisemitism exists in society in the same way Islamophobia does. They're two sides of the same coin. And I think any of us who are committed to social justice and to tackling racism in society need to be really clear and refined that tackling Israel and calling out their heinous war crimes can be done, and must be done, in the same breath as saying antisemitism and Islamophobia are totally unacceptable.

The Good Life

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Spilling the Tea

We give our thoughts on Zack’s leadership bid, left re-alignment around the Greens, and the broader shape of the left.