It’s time for Zack Polanski to make a stand against the antisemitism rippling through his Green Party. Not only is it the right thing to do, it’s also now costing him support.
The Greens recently won the Parliamentary seat of Gorton and Denton with a heavy focus on Gaza, a trend that they’ve carried into these local council elections. In doing so they’ve attracted some of the same obsessional anti-Zionists who flourished under Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership and who Sir Keir Starmer was forced to expel.
The core tension within the Greens is between robust criticism of Israeli policy, which many activists see as a matter of principle, and content that crosses into antisemitic tropes or conspiracy theories. It’s a line some Green candidates have clearly crossed.
One council candidate claimed the Golders Green ambulance arson attacks were a false flag; another tweeted about “Jewish Nazis” being “money-grubbing thieves” under the alias “the real Anne Frank”; a third shared a post that said “ramming a synagogue isn’t antisemitism. It’s revenge”. All have either been suspended or had party support withdrawn.
Last week, following a rebuke from Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Polanski apologised for criticising officers who apprehended a suspected antisemitic attacker charged with stabbing two Jewish men in Golders Green. On Sunday he then reignited tensions with the police by accusing Rowley of meddling in politics before the local elections.
Polanski would be wise to put a sock in it; his net approval rating has fallen 14 points between this week and last, according to polling released on Tuesday by More in Common.
Just looking over some data ahead of our elections webinar later and Zack Polanski’s net approval rating has fallen by a fairly chunky 14 points over the last week. Still far ahead of Starmer but also puts him now well below the top three of Badenoch, Davey and Farage. pic.twitter.com/1gBt2HIr9N
— Luke Tryl (@LukeTryl) May 5, 2026“At the heart of the drop it seems for some Green supporters – particularly young people attracted by the Greens’ more hopeful and inclusive image – a perception of not being tough on antisemitism is giving them pause for thought,” Luke Tryl, the group’s director, told The i Paper.
“The Greens will still do very well on Friday [when the results are announced], but to maintain and attract more of those voters attracted by their positive, hopeful vision of a fairer and more equal country, Polanski may have to go further in showing he is committed to tackling antisemitism in the Green Party and wider society,” he added.
The Greens have successfully created an electoral coalition of former Labour voters, university students, graduates and socially conservative Muslims by combining liberal policies, including the legalisation of Class A drugs, with its support for Palestine.
The trouble comes when support for Palestine tips into antisemitism. Polanski, himself Jewish, condemns this racism, but not everybody in his broad coalition – now 227,000 party members – feels the party has questions to answer. When concerns were raised in April, deputy leader Mothin Ali posted in a support group formed to fight “smears” from the media.
Polanski needs to work on his messaging too. In April he faced criticism for asking whether there is a “perception of unsafety or whether it’s actual unsafety” among the Jewish community.
The inflammatory words of many Gaza protesters are now providing a cloak of righteousness for those who terrorise Britain’s Jewish community. Pro-Palestine marchers who have a justified zeal to protest the suffering caused by Israel seem blinded to the anxieties of their fellow Brits.
These protests attract people who would never think of themselves as antisemitic or ever dream of attacking a Jewish person. But they can also empower those who would.
Repetition has caused many to lose the meaning of the slogans they have chanted for so long. And of course there is a spectrum. “From the river to the sea” is viewed by some as a call for Palestinian freedom; others interpret it as a call for the eradication of Israel. Then there is the far less nuanced “globalise the intifada” – seen as an incitement to violence against Jews worldwide.
Polanski is trying to have his cake and eat it. He has said he would discourage pro-Palestine protesters from using that chant but warned against specifically outlawing the phrase or banning a protest planned in London later this month.
He can’t control the marches. But Polanski should stamp out any suggestion of antisemitism in his own party or risk becoming a more modern, social-media savvy Corbyn. A grown-up leader would tell their followers to moderate their language even at the risk of losing some fringe support.
On Tuesday Starmer addressed leaders from the worlds of politics, policing, business, education, and the arts to discuss how more can be done to tackle antisemitism. The Prime Minister has learnt what Polanski has not yet realised: absorbing extremists in your ranks will repulse the mainstream electorate.
“For many voters, highlighting Green antisemitism will be more important in terms of what it means for the party’s general suitability as a serious electoral force than anything specific to the issue,” Joe Twyman, co-founder of Deltapoll, told The i Paper.
Polanski is playing a numbers game. He’s calculating right now there are more votes to be won than lost by his stance. But the rise in support won’t be exponential.
Some of the Greens risk repeating mistakes made by Corbyn and his followers by reflexively attacking any suggestion of antisemitism as an assault on their values. I’m one of the good guys, so the thinking goes, unlike the right – they are the ones truly guilty of racism.
Corbyn always maintained he is a “lifelong anti-racist campaigner”, even while at best he turned a blind eye to antisemitism spreading through the Labour Party. It may not have been the only reason he lost the 2019 election, but it certainly didn’t help a majority of voters to trust him.
As Starmer said on Tuesday, this ancient prejudice doesn’t have “one source alone”, citing Islamists as well as the far left and far right. But the Prime Minister did the work to root out this plague in his party. Polanski needs to do the same.
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