Local elections 2026: 'Vote Green, make history,' says Zack Polanski as he seeks major gains in London

Zack Polanski urged Londoners to “vote Green, make history” as he sought to radically redraw London’s political map.

The Green Party leader stressed he was aiming to break Labour’s “stronghold” grip on the capital where it has run many councils for decades.

With polls predicting major Green gains at the May 7 local elections , he said he was “very confident” that Green candidate Zoe Garbett would become Mayor of Hackney .

In an exclusive interview with the Standard, Mr Polanski also:
Speaking less than 24 hours before the polls were due to open on May 7, Mr Polanski had a clear message to Londoners.

“Vote Green and make history,” he said.

“We have a toxic combination right now of low wages and high bills.

While he was optimistic that the Greens would win the Hackney mayoralty, he was more cautious at predicting his party gaining overall control of any boroughs.

“It's important to say that in the last set of London elections, our best set ever, we won less than 1% of seats,” he said.

“So the Green Party have traditionally underperformed in London, and that's because Labour have had such a stronghold for so long.

“That stronghold looks like it's about to break,” he added, saying he expected Hackney Council to at least go to no overall control.

The Greens are also expected to do well in a string of other London boroughs including Lewisham, Lambeth and Waltham Forest.

Predicting record results for the Greens nationwide, Mr Polanski said: “I'm not complacent, and no party is entitled to people's vote.

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“I just know everywhere that I'm going, in London, people are stopping me constantly...

to say that they're feeling hopeful and they're feeling inspired and, actually, they're not voting just to stop something, which is the Labour Party and Reform.

“They're actually voting for something.

They're voting for a party that wants to lower bills, that wants to make London an affordable city to live in.”
He continued: “They're seeing the work of people like Zohran Mamdani in New York, amazing policies that are bringing hope to a whole city and they're saying, why can't we have that in London?

“And the point is, we can have that in London, and it starts by voting Green on Thursday.”
Tackling inequality in the city is a flagship Green policy.

It would be at least partly funded by higher taxes on the wealthy, under Green plans for a proposed £50 billion extra in levies raked in by the Treasury.

The Greens are proposing a 1% tax on assets of £10 million or more, or a 2% tax on assets of £1 billion or more.

They are also arguing for capital gains tax to be brought in line with income tax.

The two moves would disproportionately impact London given its wealth, as is happening with Labour’s “mansion tax” .

Defending the proposals, Mr Polanski said: “It's just recognizing that if you have an asset in this country and we have struggling public services, then it makes sense that the people with the broader shoulders face the biggest burden.”
Highlighting the huge wealth divide in the city, he added: “You could be a cleaner cleaning a building, you could be paying more in tax proportionally than the person who owns that building.

He also argued that if inequality was tackled more, Londoners would have money to spend, which would boost businesses in the city in a “virtuous circle” rather than the current “doom loop” where so many people are struggling to make ends meet.

“If you look at the numbers, the places that have been blocked have often been blocked by other parties too, and often they've been blocked for good reasons,” he argued.

“We've seen so many examples where the housing that's being suggested is going to destroy green space, is going to be unaffordable or is the wrong tenure.”
He apologised for raising the issue on social media but stood by his stance, saying: “As a politician who's elected to the London Assembly, part of my job is to scrutinize the police.”
He said the Green Party would improve its vetting of candidates as part of moves to crack down on antisemitism, saying some would-be-councillors had expressed comments which were “utterly unacceptable” but insisting this was a “handful of cases”.

On crime, he called for a shake-up of resources.

“Far too often, for instance, police will be stop and searching people for cannabis use,” he said.

“That's indiscriminately racist, because I think the statistics are something like a young black person is eight times more likely to be stopped and searched than a white peer, whereas we should be investing that money in making sure that we are stopping things like mobile phone theft.”
He argued that the RMT strikes on the Underground were about “worker safety,” even though the Aslef union accepted the proposals from Transport for London for a four-day week for drivers, praising it as an excellent deal.

He urged TfL and the RMT to “get around the table” to resolve the dispute.

On the cost of living, the Greens are calling for a freeze on the energy price cap to stop millions of families being hit with soaring bills later this year, which would cost billions of pounds.

After London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan warned that the jobs of one million Londoners could be at risk from artificial intelligence , Mr Polanski said: “The worry is about who has control of it and who is profiting from it.

“We see so-called Tech bros, multi-millionaires and billionaires who are at the table, who are far too often involved in the decision making process, as opposed to the people who are most affected.”
He stressed that regulation on AI had to be “watertight” to ensure it is used ethically.