Zack Polanski’s failure to win the Holborn and St Pancras by-election is not just a disappointment; it undermines the Green party leader’s entire strategy for his party and will inevitably bring his leadership into question. In a few months, Polanski has gone from being just about the most successful party leader of the moment to being the one who is surely now in greatest trouble.

The entire point of Polanski’s tilting away from environmental issues towards Palestine was to exploit anger at what left-wing and Muslim voters perceive to be Labour’s soft attitude towards Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu and his war on Gaza. It was always going to run the risk of offending the lentil and sandal vote, the party’s terribly nice middle class voters.

It’s true that the Green party’s share of the vote was up considerably on 2024: the Greens got 33 per cent of the votes, up 22 points on two years ago. But Polanski still fell more than 3,000 votes behind Labour’s winner Sagal Abdi-Wali.

Polanski has gone from being just about the most successful........

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