{"id":62432,"date":"2026-10-10T03:44:52","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T03:44:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/zack-polanski-vows-to-stay-as-green-leader-as-he-faces-criticism-after-by-election-defeat\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T03:44:52","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T03:44:52","slug":"zack-polanski-vows-to-stay-as-green-leader-as-he-faces-criticism-after-by-election-defeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/zack-polanski-vows-to-stay-as-green-leader-as-he-faces-criticism-after-by-election-defeat\/","title":{"rendered":"Zack Polanski vows to stay as Green leader as he faces criticism after by-election defeat"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Zack Polanski has vowed to stay on as Green Party leader after his by-election defeat, as he faced pressure from within his own party to resign.<\/b><\/p>\n

The leader of the Jewish Greens, Vivien Lichtenstein, said on Friday he should resign, adding it was a “big mistake” for him to have dodged a debate about a party conference motion that declared Zionism a form of racism.<\/p>\n

Lichtenstein’s comments come after two former Green leaders accused Polanski of failing to show leadership over the Zionism row.<\/p>\n

Polanski, who came second to Labour<\/a> overnight in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, told BBC Breakfast he would “absolutely” stay on as leader and he “of course” had not questioned that.<\/p>\n

The Greens had hoped to take the seat, previously held by former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, after a by-election success earlier this year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Polanski lost out in Thursday’s contest in London to Labour candidate Sagal Abdi-Wali – who secured 45% of the vote to his 33% – but the Green vote share was up by 22 percentage points on the 2024 general election.<\/p>\n

Following the by-election, Lichtenstein was asked whether it would be right for Polanski to continue as leader of the party. She told Times Radio: “No, I think he should resign.”<\/p>\n

Earlier in the week, Lichtenstein, who has been a member of the Green Party for nearly three decades, told Radio 4’s Today programme it was “quite possible” she would leave the party after the Zionism row. <\/p>\n

Speaking to the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire on Friday, she said she would not resign immediately because she is having conversations about how to “detoxify” the party. <\/p>\n

When asked if she had confidence in Polanski’s leadership, Lichtenstein said: “At the moment, no I don’t.” She added that she was “very disappointed” in him.<\/p>\n

Calling on Polanski to apologise, she said: “I don’t think that any Jew in the party is going to be in any danger… <\/p>\n

“There just might be some unpleasant people who will direct some unpleasant comments, and some of us are going to have to deal with them robustly.”<\/p>\n

Her criticisms were similar to those of former Green Party leader Caroline Lucas who said Polanski should have attended the vote on the conference motion on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The motion, which was passed by rank-and-file members to become official party policy, defined Zionism as an ideology supporting “an ethnonationalist Jewish state” and backed a “single democratic Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine”, which includes modern-day Israel.<\/p>\n

Adrian Ramsay, a Green MP and former co-leader, declined to back Polanski on Friday, and said he was now working to reverse the motion. <\/p>\n

“A lot depends on what happens in the days and weeks to come,” he told the BBC’s Politics East, when asked if Polanski should still lead the party.<\/p>\n

“[He] did not show leadership I would have been looking for.” <\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Zack Polanski has vowed to stay on as Green Party leader after his by-election defeat, as he faced pressure from within his own party to resign. The leader of the Jewish Greens, Vivien Lichtenstein, said on Friday he should resign, adding it was a “big mistake” for him to have dodged a debate about a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62433,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[2498,4155,1621,616,2891,2095,12118,2922,3108,12117],"class_list":["post-62432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-byelection","tag-criticism","tag-defeat","tag-faces","tag-green","tag-leader","tag-polanski","tag-stay","tag-vows","tag-zack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62432"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62434,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62432\/revisions\/62434"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}