Zack Polanski is facing calls to stand down as leader of the Green Party after he failed to win a seat in parliament at the Holborn and St Pancras by-election.
The leader of the Jewish Greens, Vivien Lichtenstein, has called for Mr Polanski to resign and said he made a “big mistake” by missing a debate about a party conference motion that declared Zionism to be a form of racism.
She is among a number of senior Green figures to have criticised Mr Polanski and raised concerns about whether he should continue to lead the party, with former leader Caroline Lucas accusing him of a failure in leadership and another long-term senior figure telling The Independent that the situation is “untenable”.
While campaigning in the by-election, Mr Polanski missed the crucial conference vote which endorsed a policy effectively calling for Israel to be abolished and replaced with a single Palestinian state, a motion which brought condemnation from other political parties and Jewish groups. Mr Polanski was barred from entering Israel as a result.
Ms Lucas said he “should have been there and he should have voted”. Meanwhile, Ms Lichtenstein, the chair of the Jewish Greens committee, issued a damning verdict on the Green leader, telling Times Radio: “I think he should resign.”
“It was a big mistake for Zack not to find a place, a quiet place, where he could have gone online for the motions debate, where he could have spoken to the two amendments that he supported. He should have done it,” she said.
Mr Polanski’s position came under further scrutiny after he was defeated in the race to replace Sir Keir Starmer as the MP for Holborn and St Pancras by Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali.
She secured 45 per cent of the vote to the Greens’ 33 per cent, a majority of 3,364 but with a 13 per cent swing to the Greens, whose vote share was up by 22.4 per cent.
Insisting that “of course I can carry on” as party leader in the wake of the defeat, Mr Polanski acknowledged that ultimately Green members would decide his fate, with a scheduled leadership vote due next year.
One senior party source told The Independent that there is “growing frustration” with Mr Polanski for missing the vote, accusing him of attempting to “sweep the issue under the carpet”.
“Most senior Greens recognise the situation is not tenable and the question will be whether Zack engages with this and shows leadership on finding a way forward for the party,” the source added.
Speaking after Mr Polanski admitted that he does not agree with the Zionism motion, the source added: “The question is, what is he going to do about it?”, warning that the leader now risks alienating both sides of his party.
Green MP Sian Berry also piled in on the morning after the by-election, saying she is “full of regret” about the Zionism motion.
She said she is “very glad” Mr Polanski has now said he would have voted against the motion, adding: “We are not where we want to be today, but I know we can build from this starting point if we work together in a new spirit.”
Asked how confident he was about being re-elected as leader, Mr Polanski told Sky News: “That’s going to be up to the members and that’s going to be up to the leadership election that happens next summer.
“What I’m experiencing, though, is an immense amount of people who are saying actually they’ve never been prouder to be a Green Party member.”
He said it was “difficult being leader of any party, particularly the Green Party”, adding: “But I signed up for that difficult job and I’m more than ready to continue.”
He also defended his decision to miss the conference vote on the anti-Zionism motion because he was campaigning in the by-election.
Asked if he supported the motion, he said: “I would have supported the motion as amended. It wasn’t amended, so no.”
But he added: “Ultimately, I agree with the substance of the motion. Where I disagree is the idea the Green Party should be deciding what the future of the region looks like.”
Ms Lucas, who was the Green Party’s first MP, said people should “see what happens in the coming days and weeks” when asked about Mr Polanski’s future on Thursday’s BBC Newsnight.
She pointed to Mr Polanski’s failure to take part in the controversial anti-Zionism motion on Sunday, saying he “should have been there and he should have voted”.
Holborn and St Pancras has been a Labour stronghold since its formation in 1983, held by Frank Dobson for 32 years and Sir Keir for 11.
Despite the mounting criticism of Mr Polanski, polling guru Sir John Curtice insisted the Greens can take “some comfort” in Friday’s by-election result, insisting that the defeat alone “should not raise questions about Polanski’s position as leader”.
“Their tally was still their second-best performance in a parliamentary by-election, behind only their success in Gorton and Denton earlier this year,” he said.
“It represented a four-point increase on the joint vote for the Greens and the Independent pro-Palestinian candidate, Andrew Feinstein, in 2024, despite facing competition from George Galloway for the Muslim vote.
“All in all, this was about as good a performance as the party could have expected given its fall in the national polls and the divisions at its party conference over its attitude towards Zionism.
“On its own at least, this defeat should not raise questions about Polanski’s position as leader. However, he will want to ask himself why the party’s rise in the polls to 16 per cent earlier this year has fallen away so precipitously.”
Meanwhile, the party’s first ever member in the House of Lords, Jenny Jones, said Polanski still has another year of his two-year term to serve, and claimed that the Greens “don’t depose leaders by gossip and criticism”.
“We’ve had some huge blips in the past. We’ve managed to get through them and come out the other side,” she told Times Radio. “So he’s there for another year. And I’m sure he is going to work incredibly hard to make sure that the party goes on the track that we would all like.”
