Zack Polanski has said he wants the Green party to replace Labour and is already building links with trade unions. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA
Leader understood to have spoken to 10 trade unions after party claimed working class voters are turning to them
Zack Polanski has kicked off a charm offensive designed to convince trade unions to stop funding Labour and throw their weight behind the Green party, as he delivered the first in a series of speeches to union conferences.
The Green leader has had “good conversations” with 10 trade unions, including some affiliated to Labour, according to party sources, and is due to address the University and College Union and the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union, not affiliated with Labour, in the coming months.
The UK’s largest unions – Unite and Unison – were among those that denied negotiating with Polanski and said they remained affiliated to the Labour party. However, Unite is holding internal discussions about its future relationship with Labour before a special conference in 2027 at which it could potentially decide to disaffiliate.
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The Greens have enjoyed a huge boost in polling since their first national byelection victory in Gorton and Denton, and the party’s membership has tripled in England and Wales since last September to about 200,000.
A Green party source said: “When Zack became Green party leader he said his goal was to replace Labour – and building strong links with trade unions is a central part of that plan.
“Working class people are increasingly looking to the Greens as the only party which will tackle the cost of living crisis and stand up for their rights. Zack’s first priority is to push unions to stop funding the Labour party – a party which in opposition made huge promises to workers and is now watering down and U-turning on those promises.”
The byelection in Gorton and Denton this week has been huge for the Green party of England and Wales, with Hannah Spencer pushing Reform’s Matt Goodwin into second place, and Labour into third. Having one extra MP in parliament may not seem like a big milestone, but this byelection win is record-breaking for the Greens. I believe it shows their potential to be a credible alternative to Labour.
The Greens had never won a byelection before. They polled less than 7% of the vote (coming in fourth place) in the Runcorn and Helsby byelection in May 2025. And, unlike Reform UK in that byelection, the Greens didn’t just edge this victory – they took nearly 41% of the vote. That’s a whopping 28-point increase on their performance in the same constituency at the 2024 general election.
The victory has given party leader Zack Polanski the confidence that voters now see the Greens as a viable alternative to Labour, even in former Labour strongholds. He announced to supporters, “this is what replacing Labour looks like”.
Over the past few years the Greens have really professionalised their party. We saw the impact of this in the 2024 general election, when they quadrupled their number of MPs and finished second in 40 constituencies.
Under Polanski’s leadership, they’ve developed a more populist edge, focusing on issues such as the cost of living and moving away from being “just” a climate party. They’ve also had a more visible media presence and started to take their communication strategy more seriously.
Spencer’s win increases the size of the Green parliamentary group to five MPs. In the context of a 650-member House of Commons, this doesn’t seem like much.
The Greens certainly aren’t large enough to swing any votes, or cause the government many problems. And although they now have more MPs than ever before, they are still only the sixth-largest party group in the Commons. There are still over twice as many independent MPs as there are Greens.
The win will, however, give the Greens some breathing space. It’s a tough job being a small party in the Commons, and the existing group of four Green MPs have shared a heavy burden of responsibilities in the chamber since their arrival in 2024. As Spencer finds her feet, she will be able to take on some of these policy portfolio responsibilities.
Having a bigger parliamentary team doesn’t just alleviate some of the pressure to be in the chamber all the time. It also allows the party to be more strategic, and to insert Green voices into more conversations than before.
This could be through places on committees scrutinising legislation, trying to catch the speaker’s eye during high-profile government statements and question times, or holding backbench debates on more local issues. There is no place for passengers in any small party, so we can expect to see Spencer playing a very visible role for the rest of the parliament.
The battle ahead
When the next general election draws closer, the Greens may be grateful of this bigger team. They will want to capitalise on their success in Manchester and continue to professionalise their operations as a national party.
They are also likely to face more hostility at Westminster. Labour is now fighting a war on two fronts. The party’s embarrassing third-place result in Gorton and Denton – which Keir Starmer called “very disappointing” – will have hammered this home. We can expect to see more attacks on the Greens, including in the Commons chamber.
Until now, the prime minister has focused much more consistent attention on discrediting Reform. Now, he needs to worry much more about Polanski and the Greens, and will be directing some focus to winning back Labour voters who see the Greens as the stronger party of the left.
Hannah Spencer celebrates her byelection win in Gorton and Denton with Green Party leader Zack Polanski. Jon Super/Associated Press
We had a glimpse of this in January, when North Herefordshire’s Ellie Chowns used her occasional opportunity to question the prime minister to ask about water pollution. Starmer turned it into a partisan attack on the unrelated topic of Polanski’s comments about Nato.
While the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, regularly berates Starmer in the Commons, the Greens rarely take such an overtly partisan approach. Reform MPs tend to participate more frequently in high-profile parliamentary occasions, where they can question the government. The Greens tend to have a more balanced, policy-focused approach, regularly popping up on committees to scrutinise legislation.
This is helped by Polanski’s position as a leader who sits outside the Commons (a member of the London Assembly). He can delegate the scrutiny of government policy to Chowns and her colleagues, while he takes broader comments about the government’s performance directly to the press.
This balance will be important as the Greens think about the upcoming local elections. Spencer told the press today that the party can now “win anywhere”, and Polanski predicted a “tidal wave” of Green MPs at the next election.
To do this, they need to maintain the momentum they’ve created this week. This means keeping a tight hold of the former Labour voters who chose them instead in Gorton and Denton.
It will be difficult for the party to carry out the same intensive campaign strategy on a more national level, but this sort of intensity is key to ensuring that the left vote goes to the Greens rather than to the other alternatives. Having more party members than ever before will help with this, but they will need to rely on their on-the-ground campaigners to feel secure.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Keir Starmer refuses to be outcnuted by Nigel Farage’s chasing the racist bigot vote.Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership is intensely relaxed about assaulting those least able to defend themselves – the very poorest and most vulnerable.
dizzy: I won hundreds of pounds by gambling on this election. I have a bet on the Green party at general election at 66/1.
Labour did not simply lose; it disgraced itself. It has been accused of sending leaflets appearing to come from a tactical voting organisation that did not exist, which “recommended” voting Labour based on “a new prediction”. Labour attacked the Greens for their principled opposition to a failed “war on drugs” that leaves a multibillion-pound trade in the hands of criminal gangs and condemns many addicts to early graves.
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Labour feared a Green victory would be existential. It is. Gorton and Denton ranked 127th on the Greens’ target list. If Polanski’s party can capture one of Labour’s safest seats, then no Labour MP can feel secure. And it is worse than it looks. Canvassers repeatedly told me they met voters – Muslim and non-Muslim alike – who were frightened into backing Labour to stop Reform. They would have voted Green had they believed victory possible. Next time, those people will.
The Starmer project rested on crushing the left. As a mere frontman for the most reactionary and personally toxic elements in his party, he secured power by assuring members he would preserve the radicalism they had voted for – and then buried it. They assumed they could get away with it, confident much of the media would applaud the destruction of socialists as sober statecraft.
But deceit is all Starmerism had – and events in Gorton and Denton show the vacuity of that. There was no animating vision, no reckoning with a broken economic order. What Starmer’s Labour did not anticipate was the re-emergence of the left beyond Labour’s institutional walls. It was comfortable competing with the Conservatives and Reform, aping their anti-migrant rhetoric. It did not regard the left as a legitimate political force: being devoured by the radical left was never in the script. In the end, its war on the left has consumed it.
Labour now faces a reckoning between a Blairite faction urging further defiance of an estranged electorate and others demanding a frantic pivot to win back disillusioned voters. Even if the leadership desired the latter, the parliamentary party is crowded with too many cynical careerists to make it credible. In my view, Labour cannot be saved: it must be replaced. Gorton and Denton suggests that is possible.
The Greens are on track to win over a hundred seats at the next general election, if the historic swing achieved to win Gorton and Denton is replicated nationwide.
Local candidate Hannah Spencer delivered a stunning by-election victory that more than tripled the party’s vote.
In 2024 the Green Party secured just 13.2% of the vote in Gorton and Denton – one of Labour’s safest seats – but Hannah Spencer has achieved 40.7% of the vote, 14,980 votes, with a swing of 27.5%.
New Green Party MP Hannah Spencer said: “I’m grateful, and thrilled, that the people of Gorton and Denton chose hope over hate and elected me as their new Green Party MP.
“This is the beginning of something massive.”
Green Party leader Zack Polanski said: “If we see a swing like this at the next general election, there will be a tidal wave of new Green MPs. When I was elected Leader of the Greens I said we were here to replace Labour and I meant it. Hannah was a fantastic candidate and I know she’ll make a brilliant MP.”
Hannah Spencer MP added: “I’m proud to have run a positive, inclusive campaign focused on the issues that matter most to local people: bringing down the cost of rent and bills, protecting the NHS, properly funding our public services, and ending Britain’s complicity in genocide.
“I’d like to thank everyone who voted for me. They know they can trust me and the Green Party to deliver on our promises.
“I also want to thank the thousands of volunteers who gave their time, skills and energy to help us reach as many voters as possible with our message.
“The Greens are the only party with a real plan to improve everyday life for the people in Gorton and Denton and across the country.”
Zack Polanski added: “This used to be one of Labour’s safest seats. In this by-election almost half of their 2024 voters abandoned them and many switched to voting Green, meaning they finished 3rd. The Green Party saw a record-breaking swing in our direction and more than tripled our vote.
“Labour fought a shameful, dirty campaign – spreading lies about Green policies and even faking a tactical voting website. They knew they couldn’t win, but they risked splitting the vote and letting Reform in.
“People everywhere will now know that voting Green is the way to defeat Reform. Many ex-Labour voters told our canvassers that they will never go back to a party that supports genocide, fuels racism, and has failed to deliver on its promise to improve life for people across the country.”
[PoliticsHome] Exclusive: A pressure group focused on who Muslims should support in elections will endorse the Green Party in Gorton and Denton.
The Muslim Vote, set up in late 2023, endorsed the four independent candidates who were elected at the 2024 general election on campaigns centred on the war in Gaza. They were Shockat Adam, Adnan Hussain, Ayoub Khan and Iqbal Mohammed.
The group has told PoliticsHome that it will support the Green candidate in the upcoming contest to replace Andrew Gwynne, who has resigned as a Labour MP for health reasons.
The party is yet to select its candidate, but the New Statesman reported over the weekend that it will not be leader Zack Polanski. The Greater Manchester seat has a significant Muslim population.
This will remain the case even if George Galloway’s Workers’ Party decides to contest the seat, the group said. The party came fourth in Gorton and Denton in 2024, and Galloway has historically enjoyed high levels of support among Muslim voters.
PoliticsHome understands that the Muslim Vote was open to supporting the candidacy of Andy Burnham in the event of the Greater Manchester Mayor being the Labour candidate.
Keir Starmer justifies why he has to travel abroad so muchKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
