Polanski offers change; Farage offers division

Green Party leader Zack Polanski just took on Reform’s Andrea Jenkyns. And the encounter showed the clear choice the UK has, in terms of both tone and policies.

Fixing a broken system vs spreading division

Nigel Farage’s far-right party has been trying to make Donald Trump-style politics normal in the UK. There’s the antisocial, in-your-face brashness. But there’s also the intensification of an elitist, racist, and anti-environment agenda.

Polanski, on the other hand, has been showing UK voters that we can do much better. And that’s been particularly powerful considering how the Labour government has been increasingly pandering to its corporate donors and the far right rather than actually doing what its ordinary supporters want it to do.

The Green leader challenged the “hate and division” at the heart of Reform’s politics and called to replace it with:

the politics of actually doing something about the broken system – about tackling inequality and offering hope to people

"If culture wars was going to fix anything we'd be absolutely thriving as a country."@ZackPolanski outlines the differences between Reform's politics of division and the Green Party's politics of hope. pic.twitter.com/IoCzPMNipv

— The Green Party (@TheGreenParty) December 15, 2025

With nothing to offer and clearly unhappy that Polanski was calling Reform’s awfulness out, Jenkyns groaned repeatedly. But, Polanski continued:

If culture wars were gonna fix anything, we’d absolutely be thriving as a country…

Nigel Farage is a charlatan. He’s a man who says he’s a ‘man of the people’. He’s a man of the WEALTHY people!

Reform is all about distraction politics and denial of facts. It absolutely doesn’t want to tackle inequality or fix the system that, for almost five decades, has empowered a tiny group of obscenely wealthy people at the expense of everyone else. Because people like Farage have fed off that system. And Reform has received money from powerful interests that want to embolden that destructive system even further.

Talking about pollution, for example, Jenkyns essentially said consumers had a right to pollute if they wanted to. And when Polanski challenged her, all she had was cheap, patronising insults:

Look how rattled Reform politicians get when you ask them to defend positions they know to be indefensible and unpopular. This won’t survive a general election campaign, better buckle up @ZiaYusufUK enjoy the lead in the polls while it lasts https://t.co/KKORzUdcjd

— Matt Zarb-Cousin (@mattzarb) December 15, 2025

The alternative is hope – in tone and action

The Green Party may not be right about everything. But Polanski is showing we can do politics differently. We don’t have to resort to insults. We can base our arguments on facts, and on hope. And we can challenge racist attempts to divide us.

The Greens have pledged proper investment in the NHS. That stands in contrast to Farage’s love of privatisation and Reform’s pledge to make NHS cuts and nurture private healthcare.

Polanski and his party have also called consistently for a wealth tax. That’s popular across the UK, even among many Reform supporters and millionaires. But Farage’s party definitely doesn’t want to increase taxes on the small section of society with increasingly obscene levels of wealth.

The catchy Green slogan is straightforward:

Cut Bills. Tax Billionaires.

Wealth tax money would go on a number of Green pledges, such as:

In short, the difference between the Greens and Reform isn’t just in tone. It’s in substance too. And the more Polanski publicly challenges the far right head on, the more people can see that.

No wonder Polanski’s the most popular party leader right now. And no wonder the party continues to advance in membership and in the polls.

Featured image via X/The Green Party