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Zack Polanski (born David Paulden; 2 November 1982) is a British politician who has been the Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales since September 2025, succeeding the joint leadership of Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay, and a member of the London Assembly (AM) since May 2021. Before being elected leader, Polanski was previously the Deputy Leader of the Greens from 2022 to 2025.
Polanski describes his political views as eco-populist.
His parents divorced when he was young.
Polanski grew up in Salford and attended the fee-paying Stockport Grammar School on a scholarship before moving to Cheadle and Marple Sixth Form College, which was known at that time as Ridge Danyers College. He studied at Aberystwyth University and later attended a drama school in Georgia in the United States. He moved to London in the mid-00s on graduation.
Polanski worked with the theatre company DifferencENGINE as an immersive theatre actor, including appearances in The Hollow Hotel, The People's Revolt (in the Tower of London) and in the Peaky Blinders immersive theatre experience. He taught at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts and the National Centre for Circus Arts. Polanski also sang for the London International Gospel Choir.
Polanski also worked as a Hypnotherapy. In 2013, a journalist for The Sun requested a hypnotherapy session to increase her breast size and body image self-confidence for an article in the paper. Polanski featured in the published article. Polanski said that he did not charge for the session, that the article did not accurately reflect the situation and apologised for his involvement.
Polanski left the Liberal Democrats and joined the Green Party in 2017. He stood as the Green candidate in the Cities of London and Westminster parliamentary constituency at the 2019 general election and finished in fourth place of six candidates, with 1.7%. Before his election to the London Assembly, he became treasurer of the Jewish Greens. In 2018, Polanski wrote on Twitter about an alleged conversation that he overheard in a restaurant, involving the then chief secretary to the Treasury, Liz Truss. According to Polanski, Truss criticised several of her colleagues and he said that the public deserved to know that she spoke differently in public compared to private. He took part in Extinction Rebellion protests and was arrested at a protest in April 2019.
On 6 May 2021, Polanski was elected a Member of the London Assembly, having been third on the Green Party's London-wide list. He also stood in the West Central constituency, where he came third, and for the Churchill by-election to Westminster City Council, where he came fourth on the same day. In the new Assembly, Polanski was elected to be the chair of the Environment committee and to be on the Committee for Fire, Resilience and Emergency Planning and the Economy Committee.
In December 2021, Polanski proposed a successful motion in the London Assembly backing the Climate and Ecological Emergency bill. It was a cross-party motion with Labour and Liberal Democrat support. In 2021 he was also the Green Party's national spokesperson for democracy and citizen engagement.
On 6 June 2022, Polanski announced his candidacy in the 2022 Green Party of England and Wales deputy leadership election. The Wales Green Party gave their endorsement of his candidacy for deputy leader. On 7 September 2022, he was elected Deputy Leader, succeeding Amelia Womack.
Polanski linked the cost-of-living crisis and the climate crisis, putting workers' rights at the heart of his platform. Polanski stated, "A higher wage economy is a green economy, and the Green party will always stand side by side with people who face economic, social and environmental struggles."
In May 2024, Polanski was re-elected to the London Assembly and, in June 2024, re-elected as Chair of the London Assembly Environment Committee. During the 2024 United Kingdom general election campaign, The Guardian praised Polanski for being a "fluent media performer". In January 2025, Polanski refused to have an all-male panel in London's Environment Committee insisting on a diversity of speakers. The Conservatives walked out of the meeting calling Polanski's actions "left wing identity politics".
In May 2025, Polanski announced his candidacy for the 2025 Green Party of England and Wales leadership election. In his announcement, he said that the Greens needed to be able to challenge Reform UK's political narrative and to take advantage of political disillusionment with the Labour Party. Later that week, Owen Jones endorsed Polanski in The Guardian. Senior members of the Green Party, including Caroline Lucas, endorsed Polanski's opponents. Polanski has stated that, under his leadership, the party will focus on "redistributing wealth, funding public services, and calling out the genocide in Gaza". Polanski repeatedly links environmental, social, racial and economic justice.
In his first speech as leader, Polanski said the Green Party aims to replace the Labour Party, and expressed enthusiasm for working with others who were critical both of the Labour Party and of fascism. Polanski also said he could not imagine supporting a coalition government led by Keir Starmer. He has said his top priority is the Wales Green Party winning its first member of the Senedd in the next Senedd election. In his first days as leader, he released the first episode of his weekly podcast Bold Politics with Zack Polanski which reached fourth place in the UK news podcast charts by 8 September, and visited Nigel Farage's parliamentary seat in Clacton to speak to the Reform UK seat's constituents.
On 30 September, Polanski was listed in Time Magazine's 2025 100 Next, listing the world's 100 most influential rising stars. On 3 October, he addressed his first annual party conference in Bournemouth, in which he called for a wealth tax, an end to the sale of arms to Israel, and criticised other parties for attacking civil liberties and immigrants. In a subsequent interview with the Byline Times, he stated his intention to run for parliament in the next general election.
Polanski has stated that he believes that the Gaza war is a Gaza genocide and should be treated as such by the UK Government.
Polanski is critical of the UK's relationship with the United States and NATO, and advocates the UK's eventual withdrawal from NATO. Polanski has said he believes that the UK's membership of NATO was untenable in the long-term, in part due to Donald Trump's threats to annex Greenland, as well as NATO prioritising militarism before diplomacy. Polanski has suggested that establishing organisations that prioritise European defence, democracy, diplomacy and international peace would allow for the UK to eventually leave NATO.
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