“We Will REPLACE LABOUR”: Zack Polanski Says Labour’s Time Over
Zack Polanski: The right can mock my teeth all it wants – it shows the Greens have struck a nerve
Since winning the Green party leadership – and as our party has risen in the polls, with our membership surging – I’ve been listening closely to what people say when they stop me in the street. The vast majority have been supportive, while those who haven’t agreed with my politics have still been broadly respectful.
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That reception in the street differs dramatically from how my leadership has been met by parts of the media. In a democracy, I should expect a challenge. Indeed, I’m not one to shy away from debate. But the reaction has gone far beyond good-faith questioning of my policy positions, or analysis of what my party is offering.
Instead, I’ve been the target of relentless nastiness – ranging from crass insults about my appearance in mainstream news outlets to the attempted ridicule of my politics by influential commentators. Of course, in being hounded by the media I am by no means unique. These attacks are often made on people with less power and privilege than me. How must it feel for members of the public who find themselves in the public eye and targeted by the tabloid media?
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What’s now clear to me, both from the sheer number of attacks and their increasingly wild nature, is that they are a product of a political and media establishment rattled by a party that’s growing fast and willing to say the unsayable: that our country has been hijacked by those interested only in serving the super-wealthy.
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When I was elected, I said I wanted the Green party to replace Labour as the progressive choice for people. I mean it. One poll in late October put us ahead of Labour for the first time and suggested the Greens could take the seat of Holborn and St Pancras from Keir Starmer. That’s what smashing the stale, old two-party politics and replacing Labour looks like.
The bad news for those who attack me is that we simply won’t back down. They can sound off about my teeth all they want. But the more I see them panic about the replacement of the politics of hate with a politics of hope, the more we know our movement is on the right track.
Activists imprison Westminster statues to highlight crackdown on protest
Greenpeace activists install prison bars around three iconic statues – Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and the Suffragist Millicent Fawcett – in Parliament Square, October 29, 2025 [Pic: © Kristian Buus / Greenpeace]CAMPAIGNERS encased statues of prominent social justice figures in prison bars today to challenge laws that criminalise protest.
Greenpeace activists imprisoned statues of Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and Millicent Fawcett outside Westminster, to highlight how they would fall foul of the government’s anti-protest laws if they were protesting today.
A new analysis by the group found that out of all the arrests made under the Terrorism Act since it came into force 24 years ago, almost half (2,100 out of 4,322) occurred in the last four months, predominately targeting people protesting the ban on Palestine Action.
Since the group was proscribed on July 5, police have carried out mass arrests of activists silently holding signs against the ban.
Green Party leader Zack Polanski said: “Calling peaceful protesters ‘terrorists’ is one of the most blatantly ridiculous and dangerous things this government has done.
“Nelson Mandela was jailed for fighting apartheid, this lot would’ve called him a national security threat. When we criminalise protest, we don’t just attack activists. We attack democracy itself.”
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Green Party leader criticises nuclear reactor plan
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c98np768g92o
Green Party leader Zack Polanski has criticised government plans to build a new generation of nuclear reactors, calling it old technology that is like “creating a fax machine”.
Centrica and US firm X-energy aim to create up to 2,500 jobs in Hartlepool by building 12 new advanced modular nuclear reactors.
Polanski said it was technology “from a long time ago” and that money would be better spent on wind and solar power, which could deliver thousands of jobs.
Labour MP for Hartlepool Jonathan Brash said the technology was being pioneered in the United States and that the companies were also working with schools and colleges to recruit a local workforce.
The nuclear site will be developed next to the town’s existing nuclear power station, which is set to be decommissioned in 2028.
The government previously said that the deal could secure the next 50 years of clean, homegrown energy and that it “marks the dawn of a new golden age for British nuclear”.
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