As the Leader of the City Hall Conservatives, people often ask me what Zack Polanski, who is a London Assembly Member as well as Green Party Leader, is really like.
Well, imagine trying to design a parody of the far-left. To get it right, you should ensure that every one of his opinions combines ignorance and naivety.
Money is no object for whichever ridiculous fad he’s currently supporting, whether that’s rent controls or Universal Basic Income. And his views on foreign policy would be no more complex than arguing the United Kingdom, the US, Israel and the West are bad, and any country which sets itself against those ‘bad’ countries are good.
He’s the sort of person who would proudly hold up a ‘Queers for Palestine’ placard, but not for a moment would he wonder why he had never seen a sign proclaiming ‘Palestine for Queers’.
In person, Zack is often quite likeable. He does not clothe himself in misery in the way that so many of his ideological brethren do. He believes in the potential for a better tomorrow.
However, the pathway he thinks would get us there is at best hopelessly out of touch with reality and at worst actively dangerous.
On Thursday, the London Assembly held a plenary. That is a meeting for all 25 Assembly Members at which we questioned Sadiq Khan’s Deputy Mayor for Business, Howard Dawber, and then had the opportunity to propose a number of motions for debate and then vote.
There were quite a few motions on topics ranging from the extraordinary number of Government U-turns to the rollout of bleed kits on London’s buses to a call for the Mayor to throw his weight behind the campaign to stop the Chinese Super Embassy in the light of Wednesday’s arrest of “three former Labour advisers on suspicion of spying for China, including the spouse of a sitting Labour MP”.
I was pleased that all three of those motions passed, but there were two other motions I would like to specifically highlight, as the response to them from Zack Polanski and his Green colleagues showed so clearly why decent people should not be prepared to vote for the Greens.
The first was a motion I proposed, which called for the Assembly to “condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the appalling desecration of the statue of Sir Winston Churchill in Parliament Square on 27 February 2026”.
This should not have been controversial. I had hoped that the Assembly would be unanimous in its criticism of this disgusting behaviour.
Labour and Reform rowed in behind the City Hall Conservatives and supported the motion. The Lib Dems chose to sit on the fence – the position where they are most comfortable – and abstained.
The Greens chose to wholeheartedly oppose the motion, desperately trying to justify vandalism as a legitimate protest.
Zack Polanski has performed a screeching U-turn on Iran. I can prove it - Susan Hall | Getty Images
Worse was to follow. Some quick backstory: in February 2023, the Assembly unanimously passed a motion, which noted: “This Assembly is deeply concerned about the Iranian regime’s violent treatment of women and men who are protesting against the violation of their basic human rights, following the killing of 22-year-old Mahsa (Zhina) Amini on 16 September 2022.”
That motion was proposed by Zack Polanski. So when my Conservative colleague Emma Best proposed a motion which welcomed both the fact that Ayatollah Khamenei was no longer in power and “the celebrations amongst London’s Iranian communities” whilst expressing hope “that recent events mark the start of a new chapter for Iran”, it should have been possible for all Assembly Members to give the motion their support.
However, yet again, the Greens felt unable to support a motion which otherwise received near-unanimous support. Zack Polanski, who is nothing if not inconsistent, decided that his hatred of the US and Israel outweighed any pleasure he might have felt at the outcome of their aerial strikes.
The Greens voted against the motion. Zack Polanski has claimed he was raised a Zionist – a position which simply means he believed that Israel had the right to exist – but he no longer holds that view.
Indeed, he leads a Party, which at their last Conference debated a motion which sought to define Zionism as "any other form of racism" and to ban anyone who identifies as a Zionist from being a member of the Green Party.
Last month, LBC’s Iain Dale asked Zack if that policy would make his mother and his sister, both of whom have expressed support for Israel, racist. Zack Polanski chose not to defend his family or to dismiss the idea that they could possibly be racist.
Instead, he proudly said: "I am equivocating, actually, and I'm openly equivocating." When people tell you who they are, you should believe them. Zack Polanski has told you very clearly who he is.
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