Standing on the steps of Hackney Town Hall earlier today (May 8), Zack Polanski declared the era of two-party politics “dead and buried”. The Green Party leader was speaking shortly after Zoe Garbett was elected as Hackney’s first non-Labour mayor. At the time of writing, Polanski’s party now has more than 1,000 councilors in England, has squeezed the Labor vote in Manchester and Exeter and looks set to make a major inroad into the Senedd in Wales. After a difficult campaign in which his party was hit by allegations of anti-Semitism among its candidates, Polanski has embarked on his victory lap. But is it premature?
Hackney was one of the main targets of the Green Party. Labor had spent almost a quarter of a century in power in the east London borough. But Garbett won by an even bigger majority than the Greens’ performance in the Gorton Denton by-election in February, taking almost half the vote (47.2 per cent). The party’s popularity in the borough bodes well if, as has been suggested, Polanski decides to stand for Hackney himself in the 2029 general election.
In the final days of the campaign in Hackney, Labor seemed to have given up hope. A source on the ground told me the party did very little on polling day compared to 2022. Even before the result was announced, rumors were flying that the Greens had won; the announcement that Polanski would attend the count himself only confirmed this assumption. (Although the mayoral result has been announced, at the time of writing the make-up of the council had not been decided. But Green Party sources say they were confident of getting that too.)
On the one hand, Hackney was always going to be straightforward for the Greens. Garbett is an ally of Polanski, the council is in his east London ward (he lives in the north of the borough with his boyfriend) and its residents – urban, progressive, educated – are the exact voters the Green Party is trying to attract. It is a ready pocket of success for the Green Party. And the same demographic has mobilized in Manchester, where the Greens took a blow from Labour’s hegemony on the city council. Some of the wards covered by this election, such as Longsight, Levenshulme and Burnage, lie in Hannah Spencer’s Gorton and Denton constituency. Exceeding their expectations, the Greens took 18 council seats. Meanwhile, Labor lost 24.
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The Greens are enjoying this result. “Andy (Burnham) may struggle to find a winnable seat,” a Green Party source suggested, echoing a similar briefing by Burnham’s Labor critics. But will he? While the Greens may have successfully squeezed Labour’s progressive base in the North West, Burnham remains popular. Data from Ipsos released on May 8 shows that Burnham is the only popular politician in the UK. A soft-left Labor source said: “It may be true that there are no safe Labor seats, but there are safe seats in Burnham. His popularity and personal brand are strong enough to get him back into parliament – anyone who denies that is denying reality.”
This is likely to remain a key line of attack for the Greens. But there is still a long way to go and the Greens are not complacent. As one source pointed out to me this morning as the first slide of results came in, the party is “certain of record gains in London, but starting from a very low point and Labor very high”. And we still don’t know how much of an impact the recent allegations of anti-Semitism among party candidates and the negative coverage of Polanski himself will have on the party’s performance.
Right now we only have half the picture. As the results continue to trickle in, could Polanski’s ambition to “replace Labour” soon be more than a bold political slogan? Or is there a ceiling on these Green shoots of success?
(Further reading: The week an anti-Semitism crisis gripped the Greens)
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