OK, now they’ve got your attention. In electing Zack Polanski, a media-friendly former actor with an eye-catching vision for a mass movement of “eco-populism”, the Greens have taken a step into the unknown. And the first task for Polanski is to bring the party with him.

Green leadership contests are generally quite polite. This time it has been different, in part due to the personalities but mainly because of the very different visions on offer.

The vanquished duo of Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns represented the nearest thing the Greens have to an establishment – two of the party’s four MPs, beneficiaries of a patient and gradual electoral push, promising more of the same.

While Polanski is hardly an outsider, having been deputy leader since 2022, his critique was pointed: progress was happening too slowly and the Greens risked being left behind, not least by a Reform party already much bigger in membership and poll numbers.

This understandably ruffled some feathers, particularly coming a year after the party won four seats in Westminster, quadrupling its representation. The contest has been at times not hostile but certainly a bit grumpy, with Ramsay barely bothering to mask his disdain for Polanski and his approach.

Some other senior Greens bristled at Polanki’s surprise leadership bid, first announced in a Guardian interview, with one terming it a “hostile takeover”. But others praised his energy and an apparent influx of enthused new members.

While the role of Green leader in England and Wales has very limited power – the party didn’t even have one before 2008 – they are a figurehead and a media focus, a role that the fluent Polanski aims to use to the full.

He must now balance an attention-grabbing style with the risk of alienating either the party’s other main power base, its MPs, or the chunk of members who remain sceptical about his talents and approach.

One issue highlighted particularly by Ramsay and Chowns in the leadership campaign was what they saw as the risk that Polanski’s more openly leftwing stance could put off some voters, particularly the sort of loose electoral coalition that helped the defeated duo win parliamentary seats last year in rural, Conservative-facing seats.

The Greens are unmistakably a radical, leftwing party, with their 2024 election manifesto last year promising wealth taxes, nationalised utilities and a ban on some short-haul flights. But much like the Liberal Democrats they have made gains by combining an energised base with a larger group of voters who broadly or even vaguely like them and what they stand for. If Polanski leans into an alliance with Jeremy Corbyn’s new party, as hinted at, this latter group could shrink.

The rejoinder from Polanski’s allies is that the status quo is not sustainable, and a tactic of painstakingly building up councillors before going for a parliamentary seat is just too slow in an era when Nigel Farage could be the next prime minister.

Additionally, for all that Ramsay is deeply respected in the party, he can be a cautious communicator and a slightly anonymous media presence. A YouGov poll last week found that just 9% of Green voters in the last election could identify him from a photo. Chowns is more natural performer but possibly even less well known.

With the obvious caveat that leading the fifth-placed party in UK politics dims the spotlight, Polanski will be under pressure to show he has not just the patter but also the judgment, with some eyebrows raised by his call in May for the UK to consider leaving Nato, which was not in the manifesto.

He will also face renewed scrutiny of his past, including a slightly curious 2013 incident in which the Sun ran an article that said Polanski, at the time a hypnotherapist, had promised to use the technique to try to enlarge a female client’s breasts.

But Polanski’s biggest challenge, which would have been the case whoever had been elected, will be to adeptly negotiate a rapidly changing political landscape, one where the prospect of the Greens hauling in large numbers of left-leaning voters disappointed with Labour risks being scuppered by the new Corbyn venture.

Events for the Greens are moving fast and they will hope they have a leader equal to the challenge. The one thing it won’t be is boring.