Zack Polanski seeks UK Parliament seat after Zionism row

Zack Polanski, leader of Britain’s Green Party, is seeking a seat in Parliament in a London by-election days after his party backed a motion saying Zionism would be treated as a form of racism.

The vote is being held in Holborn and St Pancras, the former constituency of ex-UK leader Keir Starmer. It is also an early electoral test for Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

The Greens have grown in membership since Polanski, a former actor and hypnotherapist, became leader in September 2025. He has moved the party leftwards and made it strongly pro-Palestinian, drawing support from voters critical of Labour’s stance on the Israel-Hamas war under Starmer, who left office in July.

The Green Party motion, passed at its conference on Sunday by 1,022 votes to 813, also supported a “single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine”. Israel’s foreign ministry called the resolution “a clear antisemitic text” and said Polanski, who is Jewish, was barred from entering Israel.

The motion exposed divisions inside the party, with four of the Greens’ five MPs publicly rejecting it. Polanski missed the vote after leaving the conference early to campaign in the by-election. He is currently a London Assembly member and is seeking to become the Greens’ sixth MP in the 650-seat House of Commons.

Labour has held Holborn and St Pancras since the seat was created in 1983. Its candidate is Sagal Abdi-Wali, who arrived in Britain as a child refugee in the 1990s after fleeing war in Somalia and now leads the local council.

At the 2024 general election, Starmer won almost 49 percent of the vote, with the Greens third on 10.4 percent. An independent candidate who finished second with 19 percent is backing Polanski this time.

Polling stations are open from 7:00 am to 10:00 pm, with the result expected in the early hours of Friday.