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Zack Polanski has just about slept. Still high off a seismic by-election win in Gorton and Denton for Hannah “The Plumber” Spencer, a frisson rolls through the crowd as he bounds past me and onto the stage of a Clapton arts centre.
“We don’t have to accept this slop,” he urges the rapt crowd, wearing his customary dark suit and white shirt, before enthusiastically listing off a catalogue of failures of the Labour government. Even before last Thursday’s result in Manchester, the Greens were expecting to hoover up council seats in the capital come this May’s elections. But as we step into a side room, away from the volunteers gathered to go door-knocking for the party’s Hackney candidates, Polanski tells me that their goals have now changed dramatically.
Before the Gorton and Denton election, the aim was to increase their number of London councillors fivefold, from 41 today. “I think we’re talking about possibly even double that now,” he says emphatically, having demonstrated the Greens are no longer an electoral dud by winning their first by-election in 87 contests. Riding off a wave of disaffection with Labour at a national level and with the capital’s beleaguered local authorities, Polanski is striving to upturn several London councils that have historically voted Labour. So how’s it going?
Securing the Monster Raving Looney vote
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