Polanski tops leader poll after backing refugees as Starmer sinks
Green Party leader Zack Polanski is the UK’s most popular party leader, according to a new poll by Opinium. The rating comes from data gathered shortly after Polanski spoke out in favour of desperate refugees arriving in the UK by boat, a strong contrast with Nigel Farage’s Reform, Kemi Badenoch’s Tories and Keir Starmer’s Labour.
The latter has been desperately trying to ‘out-Farage Farage’ since he took over and set about gutting it of anything resembling Labour movement politics.
While no party leader quite manages a ‘net positive’ rating, Polanski comes closest with a net of -1, compared to LibDem Ed Davey on -4, Badenoch on -10, Farage -12 — streets ahead of Starmer, who languishes bottom with -43.
The Greens also ranked far ahead of Labour and the Tories on almost everything, particularly the public knowing what they stand for and the party actually having a political vision — for a change. Interestingly, Starmer’s party ranked so poorly on ‘being ready for government’ it doesn’t even show on the chart:
A separate YouGov poll — hardly the friendliest polling company for left-wing politicians as it was founded, and is still run by, Tory politicians — found that the Greens are well ahead of any other party with 18-24-year-olds.
Polanski’s Opinium rating came shortly after he spoke out in support of refugees and other migrants arriving on small boats. While for Starmer, his new Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and other front-benchers continue to ramp up racist rhetoric and policies against migrants. Then moving to attack the human rights of UK citizens as well.
It seems the public prefers a political leader with compassion and the courage to say so. Not a gaggle of them who are all barking up the same racist tree. What a surprise.
Featured image via the Canary
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Polanski, as expected, was unable to answer coherently about the left-wing case for open borders rather than a slightly less violent and destructive treatment of working class immigrants. The socialist case for open borders is a longstanding pillar of Marxism, and sadly neither Polanski nor the Green parties have the slightest connection with socialism or Marxism. Capital and the wealthy owners of capital can move relatively freely. It is the basic right of the working class that creates capital and enriches its owners to live and work wherever it wishes.
What Smiley Zack really promises is a nice innoffensive party for the middle classes – pretend to be socialist but without any commitment or intention to follow through.
How long before they merge with the Lib Dems ? Smiley Zack was, after all, previously a Lib Dem candidate and activist.
I’m amazed to see two comments on this article, banging on about Polanski’s lack of socialist credentials. What the UK desperately needs right now is some courageous political leadership and a decent glimmer of hope in the face of a bleaker and bleaker future. If you genuinely feel that only a political party with unquestionable socialist credentials is worthy of your vote, then you now have Your Party to vote for if they manage to not distintegrate from factionalitis over the next couple of years. Or, you could just deface your ballot paper again. Either option will result in the same outcome. I’d happily give my vote to Your Party if they didn’t act like a bunch of squabbling students. As things stand now, The Greens are the only viable hope for a genuinely left leaning government that doesn’t act 100% in the interests of the world’s oligarchs. So if nothing changes, they’ll get my vote. Polanski will spend the next 2-3 years being roasted by the oligarch-owned media. Maybe you could think twice about adding to those attacks by whining from the left.
Its worth looking beyond the shiney surface at some of the undercurrents in the Green party, not least the fear among members that democracy is being eroded . For examaple :
“Within the party, we are very proud of our democracy, even to the point that it might, in some cases, slow us down. This motion takes that democracy away from our members and gives all the power to those who already have significant opportunities to influence the way in which the party operates. Members are regularly critical of the democratic systems within the Labour party, but these changes are arguably worse than Labour’s democracy. ”
Bright Green, ‘The Green Party has taken a big step away from democracy’ ,
https://bright-green.org/2025/10/10/the-green-party-has-taken-a-big-step-away-from-democracy/
Or :
“It has been reported to us that approximately 4000 new recruits via #backzac2025 What’s app registered their votes in the last three weeks before the ballot deadline.
Motion D07 entitled ‘Eliminate external influence in GPEW democracy’ which sought to minimise the risk of entrism by restricting the right to vote to members with a minimum of 3 months membership was, perhaps not surprisingly, heavily defeated at the 2025 Conference. Turkeys do not vote for Xmas.”
The Green Light, “how democratic is the green party?’
https://thegreenlight.blog/2025/11/17/how-democratic-is-the-green-party/
I’m sure you can see the implications of that.
Smiley Zack isn’t being given that much of a hard time by the media, probably because they see him as someone who might help to derail Your Party, and then lead the Greens to being the new Lib Dems – or, as I said earlier, merge with them. And not really change anything.
With respect to Green financial policy, an interesting post today on Funding The Future :
“The problem is not that the Greens care too little about economics. It is that too many of them might accept an economic framing that treats markets as the ultimate arbiters of what is possible. Within that potential framing, government is cast as financially constrained, dependent on private capital, and permanently at risk of market punishment. As a result, green ambition could be trimmed to what markets will tolerate, not what climate science demands, and that is how radicalism is quietly neutralised, as I fear might be possible if those whom I am challenging get their way.”
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/12/15/why-economic-policy-matters-for-the-greens/
With respect to Your Party, there’s a lot being worked out behind the scenes which would not be appropriate to comment on here, but one thing is obvious – the membership has made it clear they do not want to be Labour 2.0, nor will they allow ex-Labour cliques to derail it.
Why not look more seriously at why socialism means open borders, rather than assuming the policy is impossible? You would then have some idea why Green parties are anything but good news for the working class – as their sister parties in Germany and Australia have shown clearly.
Are labour together schills pretending to be your party supporters to divide their only real opposition or are your party so stuck up their arses about purity that they can only attack the one viable alternative to the single transferable party (labour, tory, reform and lib dems depending on what side of the bed they got out that day).
Of course if they had ever learnt to play nicely with each other then they would be adding their voices to the necessary push back against fascism, instead they prefer in fighting and being the only socialists in the village.
Hard to tell as labour dirty tricks are in the dna of so many of your party that it could be either or both.
Fed up with the sniping whichever it is.
We greens are getting the job done and that is all I care about.