The Green party will name its next leader on Tuesday after a fiercely fought leadership contest that has exposed tensions over tone, strategy and the party’s ambitions on the national stage.
The frontrunner, Zack Polanski, has pitched himself as a bold communicator able to turn rising support into a mass movement. He is facing the joint candidates Ellie Chowns and Adrian Ramsay, two impactful Green MPs elected last year who are seen as offering a steadier, more targeted route to growth.
But even before a new leader is named the race has raised a bigger question: can the Greens scale up from being an insurgent force to electoral contender without splintering along the way? Insiders admit the race has been unusually fractious, more so than past contests and slightly overstated. But in a party known for pluralism, a reckoning has been forced over how the Greens balance radical energy with electoral discipline.
Polanski, who is deputy leader and sits on the London assembly, dismissed claims his campaign represented a “hostile takeover” from new members. It is “laughably absurd” he said. “We’ve attracted thousands of new members. That’s not a takeover, that’s success. We’re showing people that a new kind of politics is possible.”
He framed the race as a genuine debate over ambition and messaging. “Sometimes Green contests have felt like coronations,” Polanski said. “This one hasn’t. It’s been a proper debate about what the party is for, how we communicate and how ambitious we’re willing to be.”
Polanski confirmed to the Guardian he would consider standing in Hackney North and Stoke Newington if the current MP Diane Abbott was not allowed to run for the Labour party. “If Labour replaces her with rightwing lobby fodder, they’re gifting the seat to us,” he said. “I want to be one of the first Green MPs in London – whether that’s in Hackney or elsewhere.”
While senior figures have openly criticised Polanski’s messaging, some party veterans are privately uneasy about what they see as a growing reliance on “fighty language”, particularly in contrast to the Greens’ traditionally calm, evidence-based tone.
One figure described discomfort with “violent metaphors” and suggested the party had long prided itself on persuasion not confrontation.
Another insider said: “Job one for whoever wins is to heal the rift. There’s been more friction this time, and while I think the differences are exaggerated, you need unity if you’re going to grow.”
The race has also highlighted other strategic questions. Siân Berry, a former party co-leader and now an MP, said the key challenge was scaling up without sacrificing discipline. “At the last election we said out loud where our target seats would be and we stuck to them. The next leader has to decide: do we go broader and risk missing more seats? Or go deep and win fewer, more securely?”
Neal Lawson, the director of the thinktank Compass, said the contest had exposed deeper dilemmas for the party, including whether it could unite and position itself for a broader role in a shifting political landscape.
“They’ve ended up with a binary choice between a more small-c conservative version of Green politics and a more radical populist one,” he said. “If they want to grow they need both wings.”
Lawson said it was a missed opportunity that Polanski had not run on a joint ticket with one of the other candidates but “that moment’s passed”. “The real question now is whether the party can heal that rift if, as many assume, Zack wins.
“There’s a wider issue here which is how the Greens position themselves in any future progressive alliance. Alongside Labour, the Liberal Democrats or ‘your party’, whatever formations emerge, the Greens will need to be part of something bigger if they want to confront what could be an increasingly united right.
“We’re moving towards two clearly defined blocks in British politics: a left and a right, each with around 50% of the vote. And it won’t be enough to have isolated Green or Lib Dem MPs if Farage or Robert Jenrick can unite the right. That’s the broader strategic challenge.”
Chowns rejected claims the race had turned bitter. “I don’t know who has described it that way and I completely disagree. There aren’t major policy differences or big dividing lines. From my perspective it’s about tone and strategy and even those differences have been overstated.”
Chowns said she and Ramsay offered a principled but pragmatic Green party. “We need to be clear, bold and outspoken but also credible, focused and effective,” she said. “That’s what Adrian and I offer.”
