At Brighton, Polanski raised his arms in triumph. It felt more like a wave goodbye

The Greens’ leader seems long on agitprop but short on ideas, and one byelection away from losing his job

T he Chronicle of a Death Foretold. It must be weird to realise that you have in effect made yourself obsolete inside a year. Worse, that you have actively accelerated your demise. Even AI doesn’t work at that speed. But that’s precisely what it looks as if Zack Polanski has done. Maybe he should just look on the bright side. He’s managed eight Liz Trusses. Not to be sneezed at.

Polanski is partly a victim of his own success. A cautionary tale of being careful what you wish for. Like Nigel Farage, the leader of the Green party was one of Keir Starmer’s fiercest critics. Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting excepted. Keir wasn’t radical enough. Did not care enough about Gaza. Was too dull. And under Zack’s leadership, voters swarmed from Labour to the Greens. The party climbed to a record high of 18% in the polls and won the Gorton and Denton byelection against the staggeringly dim Matt Goodwin.

But then Keir was airbrushed out of history and Labour chose a prime minister that a lot of people in the country actually liked. Someone who could communicate. Even if they weren’t in love with Andy, voters were willing to give him a chance. Ever since, the Greens have tanked. Now they are down to 11%. Zack’s net approval rating’s almost as bad as Nige’s. Not content with this, Zack has almost certainly fatally holed his credibility by standing in the Holborn and St Pancras byelection, which he is very likely to lose. Shares in brand Polanski have never been lower.

The Green party conference in Brighton could not have come at a worse time. Zack didn’t want it to go ahead because he wanted to concentrate on his byelection campaign. Senior members of the leadership were briefing that the whole conference was pointless.

But the conference did go ahead, and on Friday lunchtime it began with the local MP, Siân Berry, and Gorton and Denton MP, Hannah Spencer, doing their best impressions of a Duracell bunny. High energy, hyperactive enthusiasm. Like Blue Peter presenters on amphetamines. Everything was great. Never better. “Come on, everybody,” said Siân. “We think the best of everyone.” We’ll reserve judgment on that till Sunday when some of the more toxic issues are aired. Hannah was also rushing on her run. “We have forced the government to change course,” she said. Mmm. And that’s sort of the problem.

Siân and Hannah were just the warm-up acts for the main event. And with the arrival of Polanski to give his leader’s speech, almost all the excitement was sucked out of the room. The packed hall became like a dead zone. The slogan on the back of the stage said “real hope” but all you could feel was desperation. The sense that the Greens had had a fleeting moment in the sun and the long nights were drawing in.

It is customary for a leader’s speech to be punctuated with standing ovations. That’s the whole point of them. Even if the leader is talking pure bollocks. Zack got two. One for saying Palestine and the other for “green revolution”. In Brighton, everyone gets a standing ovation for saying Palestine and green revolution. It’s written in the city’s DNA.

Zack looked down from the start. Normally he’s an animated speaker, but today he just looked defeated. As if he was trying and failing to will himself to care. It was just too big an ask. And maybe you couldn’t blame him. His team had chosen this day to brief the media that if they could persuade 30% of Labour voters in Holborn and St Pancras to vote for Zack, he would lose by only four points. That’s a bit like walking into A&E and being told by the doctors they can give you a heart and lung transplant but you are going to die regardless.

“What a year,” he began. Indeed. Though maybe he didn’t need to spell it out so clearly. From fringe party to something more mainstream and back again. All over in a heartbeat. Zack couldn’t disguise the look of regret in his eyes. From time to time his head bobbed up and down, as if trying to get his brain to agree with him, but his body language spoke of an inner despair. Rather than the leader of a national political party, he came across as a rather shouty undergraduate student. Long on agitprop and soundbites. Short on genuine argument.

Sure, there were nods to taxing the rich more, imposing rent controls, Free Palestine and environmentalism. But these were just words to try to please the crowds. There was no sense of how much this would cost, how it would be done or where the money would come from. “I say to government, ‘Slogans aren’t enough’,” he said without a hint of self-awareness. You could only put it down as a man who knows his political career could be as good as over by this time next week.

There was something rather sad about it all. The Greens had wanted so much more than this. They had believed they had elected a man of substance, someone less polite and deferential than previous leaders such as Caroline Lucas and Carla Denyer, who would go toe to toe with the other mainstream parties. But he had turned out to be a chimera. Just another hollow man. Long on slogans, short on ideas. A leader who had briefly burned brightly but had fizzled out. A victim of his own success. A one-year wonder destined to become a man of absence. Losing the byelection would only hasten the end.

Most leader’s speeches last about an hour. Zack was done and dusted in just over half that. Even then, it felt far too fluffy, far too long. Come the end, Hannah and Sian came on stage to raise his arms aloft in triumph. It felt more like a long wave goodbye.