Overview
- Under Zack Polanski, Green Party membership has more than tripled to about 215,000–216,000 and national support has climbed into the mid-to-high teens in recent polls.
- In February 2026 the Greens won Gorton and Denton in Manchester with about 41 percent, taking a long-held Labour seat in the party’s first by-election victory.
- At the spring conference a Greens for Palestine motion that labelled Zionism racist and challenged Israel’s legitimacy did not reach a vote because of technical problems, after Jewish Greens warned it would exclude many Jewish members and Polanski condemned what he called the Netanyahu government’s racist Zionism.
- The leadership has drawn scrutiny over antisemitism after a Telegraph report on activists’ slurs in an internal chat and over deputy Mothin Ali’s past celebration of a local win with dedications to Palestinian “resistance,” while Polanski, who is from a Jewish family, has called the Gaza war a genocide.
- Polanski has paired a wealth tax and nationalisation push with foreign-policy calls to expel US forces from UK bases and to leave NATO, and analysts say these stances, plus targeted campaigning seen in Manchester, could convert into major gains in London and other cities in May.