Zack Polanski’s landslide election as leader of the Green party marks a turning point for Britain’s fractured left. Young, rhetorically fluent and unafraid to cloak climate arguments in those about class, Mr Polanski is nothing if not ambitious. He sees his party not as a parliamentary pressure group but as a replacement for Labour itself.
His ascent might have seemed fanciful last July when Labour had just won a thumping majority. Yet Labour languishes in the polls. Sir Keir Starmer’s personal ratings have collapsed. On the extreme right Reform UK now boasts 237,000 members, 870 councillors, and 10 councils under its control. The Greens have more MPs than ever before. And the uneasy leadership team of Jeremy Corbyn and Zara Sultana is preparing to launch a new party to Labour’s left. This is no longer political noise at the margins. This is about the structural failure of leadership at the centre.
Sir Keir’s attempt to anchor Labour as a party of managerialism has created an ideological vacuum. He has offered no moral project, no radical agenda, no post-crisis settlement. In response to Nigel Farage’s rise, he has chosen not to confront the Reform UK leader’s rhetoric but to adopt it as his own, notably refusing to challenge the scapegoating of migrants.
The consequence is that Reform has increasingly come to own the debate around immigration and national identity. And on the left, Mr Polanski and the Corbyn-Sultana project see their chance. Both seem open to cooperating. Both have the same analysis – what they consider to be Starmer’s vacuous centrism – but offer slightly different solutions. Mr Polanski speaks of a climate-anchored politics rooted in solidarity with workers and migrants. Mr Corbyn brings anti-imperialism and name recognition; Ms Sultana brings radical identity politics. These insurgents claim to represent the 99%. They appeal to younger, disillusioned voters and are building parallel movements.
The paradox is that while Britain’s left is surging it remains splintered. Mr Polanski calls for an “intellectual coalition” rather than an electoral one – a reminder that one has to win the battle of ideas before being able to win power. The Greens took second place in 40 Westminster seats at the last election. Mr Corbyn is already drawing thousands to public meetings. Yet both risk mimicking Reform’s effect on the right: successful enough to weaken Labour, but not presently coherent enough to win power.
More than one in five voters say they’d consider backing a new leftwing party. While Mr Polanski appeals beyond the Greens, the Corbyn ally James Schneider calls for a deeper break with Labourism and electoralism. He suggests a left project that unites the dispossessed – low-paid workers, precarious graduates and racialised communities – through grassroots organising and alternative models of government rooted in agency, not just representation.
Sir Keir’s retreat into economic orthodoxy and cautious incrementalism has allowed insurgents, most obviously on the right, to set the terms of debate. He now faces a left rebelling not just against injustice but Labour’s growing irrelevance. Crucially, a new form of mass politics has given rise to movements – from Palestinian solidarity to climate activism to anti-austerity – that the Labour leadership refuse to assimilate. Labour’s defence of an old order that is crumbling away has only helped Mr Polanski. Unless Sir Keir reclaims the narrative terrain and offers transformative policies – and fast – British politics will not see only realignment but rupture.
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