Zack Polanski faces Ellie Chowns at Green party leadership hustings
Andrew Sparrow
Hi, I’m Andrew Sparrow, picking up again from Nadeem Badshah, and blogging from Hoxton Hall in north London, where chairs are being set up into a handsome auditorium for leadership hustings for the Green party of England and Wales. (The Scottish Green party is a separate entitity.) It is due to start at 6.15pm.
There have been quite a few hustings already, and four more are scheduled, but we have not covered the contest much on the Politics Live blog, and we certainly have not reported from a hustings. So tonight it is going to get full attention for two hours.
The Greens are a smallish party, they normally hold leadership contests every two years, often it ends up as a co-leader job share and, because members have much more control over policy and other matters then they do in other parties, the leader or leaders have surprisingly little power. “The primary purpose of the Green party leader is to provide visionary leadership and direction for the party,” is how the party explains it.
But this contest is attracting more interest than most previous Green party leadership elections have. That is partly because the party is stronger than it has ever been before. It has four MPs at Westminster, more than 800 council seats and it is regularly picking up about 10% support in opinion polls.
Where do they go next? That is the other reason why the contest deserves more attention, because the choice facing members is sharper, and spikier, than it normally is in a party with collegiate, herbivore instincts.
On the one side, Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns are running on a ‘more of the same [success]’ platform. They are both MPs, Ramsay is a current co-leader and they say they can “can inspire teams, grow trust and deliver results”. They were both meant to be here tonight, but Ramsay can’t be here because of a family reason. And it is a job share; they have not always appeared together at hustings.
And they are up against Zack Polanski who is running on an “eco-populist” platform promising what is crudely seen as out-Faraging Reform UK from the left. He is a skilled social media performer, and is also widely seen as the favourite – although, because the Greens are a small party (around 65,000 members), they are hard to poll, and no one knows for sure.
Zack Polanski. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The GuardianEllie Chowns with Adrian Ramsay. Photograph: Ellie & Adrian 2025/PAShare
Key events
35m ago
Green party leadership hustings – snap verdict
2h ago
Chowns says she and Ramsay offer ‘credible’ leadership, saying as MPs they are ‘where political weather made’
2h ago
Polanski says contest about ‘who can cut through’ and Greens need ‘bold’ leadership to stop Farage becoming PM
2h ago
Question 6 – developing talent
2h ago
Polanski says Green party PR should combine ‘substance with clickbait’, with ‘storytelling’ as good as Farage’s
2h ago
Question 5 – getting media attention
2h ago
Chowns says Greens should stand for ‘different style of politics’, and should not be copying Nigel Farage
2h ago
Polanski says Green party should not be closing down prospect of cooperating with Corbyn-Sultana party
2h ago
Chowns says she is ‘always up’ for considering working with other leftwing parties, in what Polanski claims is ‘shift in tone’
3h ago
Question 3 – antisemitism
3h ago
Polanski suggests capital would be better off without London City airport, saying it does not help local residents
3h ago
Question 2 – rent support for small businesses and community organisations
3h ago
Question 1 – net zero
3h ago
Polanski says leadership contest not about strategy or policy, but who is best communicator
4h ago
Key developments in Green party leadership contest so far
4h ago
Zack Polanski faces Ellie Chowns at Green party leadership hustings
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Green party leadership hustings – snap verdict
Most commentators who have expressed a view think Zack Polanski will win the Green party leadership contest, perhaps quite easily. Voting does not open until Friday and the ballot goes on all month – the results will be announced on Tuesday 2 September. There is a limit to what you can pick up from a single leadership hustings, but there was nothing that was said or that happened tonight that suggests this assessment is wrong. Ellie Chowns came over as decent and reasonable, but Polanski was in a different league when it came to verve, polish and passion. As a member of the London assembly, he was playing to a home crowd, but that alone does not explain why, judging by the audience reaction, he was able to fire them up more. He is a natural performer on a political stage.
In a contest with a small electorate (like the parliamentary Conservative party), public appearances aren’t always decisive because the voters know all the candidates personally, and so other factors come into play. Green party elections were probably like that a long time ago. But the party has more than 60,000 members now, and many who vote will do so on the basis of what they have seen on the media. In this space, Polanski seems the clear winner.
It was a friendly debate. (Perhaps Adrian Ramsay not being there made a difference.) Polanski said there was no disagreement on policy and, from what was said tonight, that seems true. He also claimed there was no disagreement about strategy. (See 6.42pm). That is more spurious, because there are clearly tensions between the Green wing very comfortable with Corbynism (Polanski now – but not when Corbyn was actually Labour leader), and the Chowns-Ramsay wing more alive to the concerns of Tory-Lib Dem-leaning voters. But when Polanski said it was mostly a choice between communication styles, that sounded right.
And the debate about communication means, in effect, how best to counter Nigel Farage. The Reform UK leader was referenced constantly tonight; Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch barely got a mention. Chowns seemed horrified by the notion that the Green party had anything to learn from the way Farage campaigns. (See 7.34pm.) Polanski said the opposite. (See 9.43pm.) Given the record of all the others in British politics who have assumed that Farage will just self-implode if left to his own devices, Polanski’s argument was more persuasive.
Has he got what it takes to be a leftwing, progressive Farage? It is too early to tell, but possibly. There aren’t many models in British politics for serious leftwingers who manage to present as charismatic, well-informed, likeable and normal. Ken Livingstone, in his early London mayor days (before he lost his judgment), may be the best example. It is also a lot easier for politicians on the right to be personality politicians, because they do not have to worry so much about censorious party members who police what gets said over policy. But Polanski has certainly got the potential to be a big, leadership voice in the social media era. (Assuming he wins …)
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Updated at 22.24 CEST
Chowns says she and Ramsay offer ‘credible’ leadership, saying as MPs they are ‘where political weather made’
And in her final statement Chowns said the Greens needed effective leadership in parliament. She said Caroline Lucas, the former leader, was endorsing her and Adrian Ramsay because she recognised that.
She suggested the party would lose out if the leader or leaders were not sitting in Westminster.
After the media circus of a leadership election has moved on, once we’re back to the day to day business of politics, being there at the centre of Westminster is where the political weather is made.
I wasn’t so convinced of it a while ago, but I absolutely am now. It is so important that our leaders are there on that political platform, able to speak directly, speak truth to power, hold power to account day in, day out, in Westminster.
She said she and Ramsay were offering a leadership that was “focused on winning elections” and “bold and credible”.
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Updated at 22.03 CEST
Polanski says contest about ‘who can cut through’ and Greens need ‘bold’ leadership to stop Farage becoming PM
In his final statement, Polanski said that this election was about “who can cut through”.
He went on:
This is not just about who leads the Green party. This is about the fact we are facing down the barrel of a Reform government. Nigel Farage could be prime minister, and I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say the Green party could play a pivotal role in stopping that happen.
But we cannot stop that happen if we are just asking questions in parliament, as important as questions are. We cannot stop that happening if we look at slow, steady, incremental change.
We will stop that happening by being bold – being very clear about exactly what we stand for and exactly what we stand against.
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Updated at 22.02 CEST
Question 6 – developing talent
The final question was about what the candidates would do to develop talent in the party.
Polanski says future talent needs to be developed.
He says all four Green MPs are either leaders, ex-leaders, or running to be leader. He says he wants to be an MP. But if he were leader, with two deputies, that would be seven Green figures with a big platform.
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Updated at 20.55 CEST
Polanski says Green party PR should combine ‘substance with clickbait’, with ‘storytelling’ as good as Farage’s
Polanski says he has given more than 80 interviews since this contest started – not just comments to journalists, but proper conversations about policy. He goes on:
I don’t agree that it’s binary between clickbait and substance. I think we need substance with clickbait.
And that takes him to Nigel Farage.
So when we look at Nigel Farage, I despise Nigel Farage’s politics, but it is undeniable he is one of the most effective politicians this country has ever had.
I hated Brexit, but he caused Brexit without even being in parliament, just through the power of his storytelling.
Now he’s playing politics on easy mode so he can tell lies and misinformation. And I agree, and I hope Ellie wouldn’t say for a second I was dabbling in that. We should never go into lies and misinformation.
But what he does is he takes those lies and he tells a powerful story that’s easy mode.
We’re in difficult mode. We need to take science research and truth, but that, on its own, is not enough. People aren’t interested in graphs and spreadsheets.
We need to take that science research and truth and tell a powerful story that cuts through, and this, for me, is the very centre of this leadership campaign.
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Updated at 20.50 CEST
Question 5 – getting media attention
The next question follows up on this. What are you going to do to make sure the Greens get as much media attention as Nigel Farage?
Chowns says it is frustrating how much attention Reform UK get. She says she has spoken to the BBC about this, and they take into account not just the number of MPs (Reform UK are now on four, the same as the Greens). They take into account polling, she says.
But she says she thinks the Greens have “hugely increased” their visibility as a party.
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Updated at 20.51 CEST
Chowns says Greens should stand for ‘different style of politics’, and should not be copying Nigel Farage
Chowns says people tell her that she has not caught the national attention in the way that Nigel Farage has. She goes on:
I would say I don’t aspire to being a Nigel Farage. I aspire to a different type of politics. And yeah, maybe it’s slightly slower burn, certainly it’s less simplifying, certainly it’s far less polarising, certainly I don’t lie and scapegoat and all the rest of it in the way that Nigel Farage has done. And I don’t think we should be aspiring to learn those sorts of lessons at all. I think our USP as Greens is a different style of politics.
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Updated at 20.51 CEST
Polanski says he was on a platform with John McDonnell recently. Asked about cooperation between the Greens and Labour or other leftwing parties, McDonnell said at this point he was not interested in electoral pacts, but in intellectual pacts. Polanski says that is his view too.
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Polanski says he does now know what will happen to the Corbyn-Sultana party. As deputy leader, he knows how hard it is to get a party to agree on something, he says.
He goes on:
But if they get up and running, great, let’s talk about how we work with them.
And if they don’t get up and running, let’s make sure we’re the party that was proud about our values …
I think that’s about reaching open the hands of friendship, cooperation, and recognising the real threat here is Reform, not Jeremy Corbyn and Zara Sultana.
In response, Chowns plays down the extent of her disagreement with Polanski on this. She suggests she is not against cooperation with the Corbyn-Sultana party. She just stresses that she thinks it is too early to be taking decisions about this, because it is not clear what is going to happen to the Corbyn-Sultana proposal.
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Updated at 20.34 CEST
Polanski says Green party should not be closing down prospect of cooperating with Corbyn-Sultana party
Polanski says the Greens need to do some “self-reflection” about the fact that, when Jerermy Cobyn and Zarah Sultana said they would start a new party, 500,000 signed up to say they were interested.
He says he would like those people in the Green party. But the Greens need to recognise that “this half a million people, for whatever reason, aren’t connecting that yet with our values”.
We need to step up. We need to be bolder. We need to make sure that those people know that if they align with our values, which I believe they do, that they are welcome in the Green party.
I consider Jeremy Corbyn and Zara Sultana, both personally and politically, people I want to work with. That does not mean I am talking down the Green party. That doesn’t mean I believe we should go out there and fight for every vote and win every seat we can.
Polanski says he was “disappointed” to see Adrian Ramsay on Twitter saying that the Greens would not become a Jeremy Corbyn support act. He goes on:
Of course we are not the support act, but I also think that’s a way of shutting down conversations before they’ve even begun.
He says he does not know where those conversations might go. But the Greens should not be sending out “tribal tweets”. He goes on:
I think it’s the time to be curious about what does a new politics look like?
What does it look like when we get in the room and say, ‘if we work together, how do we stop Reform?
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Updated at 20.30 CEST
Chowns says she is ‘always up’ for considering working with other leftwing parties, in what Polanski claims is ‘shift in tone’
The next question is about working with other parties. Could an alliance with other leftwing parties work?
Chowns says cooperation is “central to the DNA of the greens at so many levels in councils around the country”.
As an MEP, she worked with other parties, she says.
She is passionate about PR, she says. That is partly because it will force parties to cooperate more with each other.
She goes on:
So I am always up for considering cooperating with members of other parties wherever there is common ground. We’ve cooperated in parliament on all sorts of votes already.
It’s quite early to be thinking about the specifics of the next general election, it’s probably four years down the road. And if you look back at the last couple of decades of politics, if you looked at any four-year period in that, any two-year, one-year period in that, you would be really hard put to predict where things would be at the end of that period …
The prospect of a Reform government, or a Reform-led government, should really, really worry us.
Polanski welcomes this. He says he thinks this is “a shift in tone” from Chowns, who has previously played down the prospect of working with the Corbyn party.
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Updated at 20.22 CEST
