Polanski wants to be an MP. Don’t make the Corbyn mistake again

Zack Polanski wants to become the next MP for Holborn and St Pancras and if that doesn’t set major alarm bells ringing then you haven’t been paying attention.

You mustn’t dismiss this as political theatre, or assume Labour will deal with him, or convince yourself that because Polanski is already leader of the Green Party, becoming one MP among 650 would make little difference. But above all, do not leave it to somebody else.

Britain has seen this movie before and so has specifically British Jewry, by which, for the purposes of this piece, I mean those of us who believe in the right of the Jewish people to self-determination and the continued existence of a Jewish state, Zionists.

We have seen what happens when a political movement begins treating Zionism as though it were simply another political ideology, something Jews can reasonably be expected to discard, denounce or cleanse themselves of. It is nothing of the sort.

The word Zionism may be modern, the Jewish relationship with Zion is not. It is historical, religious, cultural, civilisational, familial. It predates the State of Israel, it predates Herzl, it predates the political movements that now seek to redefine it for us.

That is why the attempt to turn “Zionist” into a term of abuse is so dangerous. It creates a convenient fiction in which people can insist they have absolutely nothing against Jews while directing their hostility towards something that, for an enormous number of Jews, is inseparable from how they understand their Jewishness.

We have seen how hostility mutates into abuse, violence and even the murder of Jews who refuse to renounce their connection to it. We have also seen what happens when we recognise the danger, fight it when the stakes appear existential and then convince ourselves that somebody else will deal with what remains.

We did it with Jeremy Corbyn, we cannot do it again with Zack Polanski.

When Corbyn threatened to become Prime Minister, British Jews and many, many others mobilised. We marched, campaigned, spoke up, issued warnings, ensured that no slight, attack or trope went unanswered. Corbyn was defeated and eventually ceased to lead the Labour Party, so we finally exhaled.

When he subsequently stood as an independent in Islington North, the urgency disappeared. It wasn’t our constituency, it wasn’t our election, someone else would deal with it, except nobody did. Corbyn’s supporters organised, they travelled into Islington, delivered leaflets and knocked on doors. They turned political belief into political organisation and the result…

Corbyn won 24,120 votes to Labour’s 16,873. He remained Jeremy Corbyn MP – and those two letters really mattered. They preserved a seat inside Britain’s political machinery, the Commons chamber, parliamentary privilege, questions, debates, resources, access, international legitimacy and the institutional authority of being one of 650 elected members of Parliament.

We have to learn our lesson, because Zack Polanski becoming Zack Polanski MP would matter enormously.

Look at the man’s record – and before anyone tells me this is about criticism of Israel, save your breath, you don’t believe that, no matter how passionately you extol your anti-racist virtues.

Many criticise the Israeli government, millions of Israelis criticise Israeli governments. Despise Netanyahu, oppose settlements, demand a two state solution, condemn individual actions of the IDF, argue that Israel has prosecuted the war in Gaza disastrously. None of those positions necessarily cross a red line, but this is about something far more fundamental.

This year the Green Party was confronted with a motion entitled “Zionism is Racism.” For the leader of a mainstream British political party, that should be the easiest question imaginable. No, not on my watch.

Zionism, the belief that Jews are entitled to national self-determination in their ancestral homeland, is not inherently racist. But when Polanski was directly challenged on whether Zionism is racism, he didn’t say that, instead he said:

“I am equivocating, actually, and I’m openly equivocating.”

Pressed again, he said:

“It depends on what you mean by Zionism.”

Consider what is being said, openly, proudly, publicly. The leader of a mainstream British political party cannot unequivocally reject the proposition that the national liberation movement of the Jewish people is racist.

He has also been repeatedly asked whether Israel has a right to exist.

His answer?

“I don’t believe any country has a right to exist.”

Israel, apparently, disappears into an abstract philosophical discussion about whether countries themselves possess rights. Perhaps Britain doesn’t have a right to exist either, he argues. Except nobody is organising a significant political movement across the Western world demanding the dismantling of Britain.

Israel isn’t afforded the luxury of that abstraction. Its continued existence is a live political question for people who actually seek its destruction.

Even Jewish members of Polanski’s own party have warned about where this politics can lead. Jewish Greens raised concerns that proscribing Zionism within the party could have a discriminatory impact. Then correspondence published by Greens for Palestine revealed accusations against Jewish Greens that at best would be described as deeply offensive and at worst as trope laden antisemitism.

Jewish Greens were accused of responsibility for the actions of the Israeli embassy, accused of responsibility for a campaign of death threats, accused of being apologists for Israeli aggression. This isn’t an anonymous internet sewer where abuse of this ilk has become commonplace. This is an argument taking place within the political movement Zack Polanski leads.

Then there is Israel itself. Polanski has called for Britain to withdraw from the UK-Israel trade agreement, impose more robust sanctions, stop all arms sales and “suspend diplomatic ties” with Israel. Any one of those positions can, of course, be argued on its merits. Countries impose sanctions, Governments suspend diplomatic relations, there is nothing inherently sinister about advocating either.

What makes it relevant here is the pattern, because once again, it is Israel and only Israel. The same Israel whose right to exist produces philosophical equivocation. The same Israel whose national movement produces equivocation over whether it is racist. The same Israel that dominates so much of the political discourse of a party whose attitude towards the country Polanski himself once described as “a bit obsessive”.

Polanski has not mounted a comparable political campaign demanding the suspension of Britain’s diplomatic relations and trade arrangements with other states whose conduct could quite reasonably attract fierce condemnation. That doesn’t make his position on Israel illegitimate, it makes the selectivity relevant.

Why Israel, again and again and again? At some point, the frequency, intensity and exceptionalism become part of the story. Especially when the man at the centre of it once recognised precisely the same phenomenon and gave it a name himself:

“Obsessive.”

Then came Golders Green. Two Jewish men were stabbed, police confronted and arrested the alleged attacker and Polanski’s immediate instinct was to amplify a post attacking the police response. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner personally rebuked him, warning that his intervention could have a “chilling effect” on officers protecting Londoners. Polanski apologised for sharing the post “in haste”, but that isn’t the only question.

The question is: what kind of political instinct takes you there in the first place? Especially when all of this is happening while the Green Party has faced repeated controversies over candidates accused of antisemitic statements and anti-Israel conspiracy theories.

Polanski frequently references the fact that he is Jewish. So am I and I find his repeated invocation of his Jewishness in these debates deeply troubling.

Being Jewish is not a trump card. It does not confer some special licence to equivocate over whether Zionism is racism. It does not make questioning the legitimacy of Jewish national self-determination somehow less consequential. It certainly does not provide political cover for a movement in which Zionists are increasingly treated as people whose beliefs require explanation, qualification or repudiation before they are considered acceptable.

There is something particularly uncomfortable about watching a Jewish political leader invoke his own identity while helping legitimise a politics that the vast majority of Jews experience as profoundly hostile to an elemental part of theirs.

Polanski is entitled to have travelled from the man who once defended IHRA and warned that the Green Party was becoming “obsessive” about Israel to the politician he is today. But he is not entitled to use his Jewishness as an answer to criticism of that journey.

“I’m Jewish” is not an answer to “is Zionism racist?” It is not an answer to why Israel, uniquely and repeatedly, becomes the object of this extraordinary political fixation. It is not an answer to the concerns of Zionist Jews watching the political space around them become steadily more hostile.

So don’t allow Polanski’s Jewish identity to end the conversation. Start the conversation there instead. Ask what he says, ask what he refuses to say, ask what he supports, ask what he tolerates, ask what has happened inside the political movement he leads. Above all, ask how the man who once looked at the Green Party’s fixation with Israel and called it “obsessive” ended up not fighting that obsession, but leading and enabling the party in which it flourishes.

The numbers are where the threat stops being theoretical and should hopefully ensure true engagement from anyone reading this.

At the 2024 general election, Keir Starmer received 18,884 votes, Andrew Feinstein 7,312 and the Green Party 4,030. Feinstein plus Green equals 11,342 votes. Feinstein, whose campaign made Gaza and Israel central issues, is now backing Polanski rather than standing himself and calling for progressive forces to unite.

The Greens have grown dramatically under Polanski, they made gains in Camden this year and they are already mobilising activists in Holborn and St Pancras. Polanski doesn’t need to invent a coalition. It already exists, he merely needs to consolidate it.

We have seen the strategy before, one only has to look at Leeds to understand the playbook. Green councillor and deputy leader Mothin Ali won Gipton and Harehills and used his victory speech to declare:

“We will raise the voice of Gaza. We will raise the voice of Palestine.”

This was a politician who had spoken after 7 October about Palestinians having a right to “fight back” and who attacked a Leeds rabbi who had served in the IDF. Whatever your view of Ali, ask the obvious question: Why was Gaza so prominent in an election to Leeds City Council?

The answer is clear, because political parties understand political mobilisation. They identify issues capable of moving voters and they campaign on them. This is where there is a broader coalition which we should stop pretending not to see.

Parts of the radical left, some Islamist political movements and sections of the LGBTQ+ activist movement hold profoundly different, sometimes irreconcilable positions on sexuality, women’s rights, religious authority, secularism and freedom of expression. Yet Israel has proved capable of generating extraordinary political solidarity between them.

Political coalitions don’t require agreement about everything. They require agreement powerful enough about something. For parts of Britain’s activist left, that something has increasingly become Israel. The Greens understand the political energy within that coalition, Polanski certainly understands it and Holborn and St Pancras offers an extraordinary opportunity to harness it.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking of this as one seat, instead imagine the headline that would reverberate through British politics.

A Polanski victory would be presented as vindication of his leadership, his strategy, of the politics that brought him there. The Greens would use it to raise money, recruit members, attract activists and target more parliamentary seats.

Do not make the Corbyn mistake again, because when Corbyn fought Islington North, his supporters understood something we didn’t. Tweets don’t knock on doors, outrage doesn’t deliver leaflets and an Instagram post isn’t a canvassing operation. They turned up and we did almost nothing. We mobilised when Corbyn might become Prime Minister, then shrugged when the prize was “only” his parliamentary seat and so the platform remained.

This time, anyone who opposes what Polanski represents should understand the lesson. His supporters will organise, they will canvass, they will knock on doors, they will make their argument voter by voter, street by street, asking local residents about their views on Gaza, the BDS campaign, whether they are Zionists and we, as his opponents, cannot fight a ground campaign with social media outrage.

So don’t wake up the morning after the election and say you’re horrified, please don’t say you assumed Labour would win and don’t say somebody should have done something. Instead be the somebody.

If you live in the constituency, scrutinise every candidate and vote. If you care about the outcome, participate in the democratic process, volunteer for a campaign you support, donate within electoral law, challenge claims with evidence, talk to people and turn political concern into democratic engagement.

Ask Polanski whether Zionism is racism, ask him why Israel’s right to exist becomes an exercise in semantics, ask why Jewish members of his own party felt compelled to warn about the consequences of proscribing Zionism, ask what changed between the Zack Polanski who warned that the Greens were becoming “obsessive” about Israel and the Zack Polanski who leads them today.

Zack Polanski can win this election.

If he does, he doesn’t simply become another MP. He becomes the Green leader who captured a former Prime Minister’s constituency. His political project gains parliamentary legitimacy. His opponents discover that what they regarded as fringe has acquired a foothold inside Westminster and every politician watching learns a lesson about which political messages can deliver votes.

That is the threat and it is real.

We discovered in Islington North what happens when one side turns up and the other assumes everything will somehow be fine. We don’t get to claim we weren’t warned this time.

So when this election is over, whatever the result, make sure nobody who cared about stopping Polanski can say:

I thought somebody else would do it.