Exclusive: Zack Polanski backs Scottish and Welsh independence

The eco-populist Green leader has called for sweeping change to Britain's political system, and spoken about potentially leading an explicitly ‘English’ party for the first time.

The new Green Party of England and Wales leader has backed Scottish and Welsh independence as part of a wider attack on the UK’s political system. In an exclusive interview with Abolish Westminster, Zack Polanski also called for the abolition of the House of Lords and the monarchy - his most sweeping criticism of the British state since taking on the role.

Speaking about rising support for Welsh independence, he accused both Labour and Tory governments of “a complete resentment, a disrespect, an almost dismissive and exclusionary attitude towards the Welsh people,” adding, “How dare any English or British politician turn to Wales and go ‘you need us, and I’m going to give you scare stories about how we’ll make sure you don’t have the resources to do that’. We should be empowering our neighbours”.

He also said he personally supports independence for the Wales Green Party, and discussed how he would approach the task of leading a specifically English party, were this to happen.

The remarks come just over six months before the 2026 elections to the Welsh Senedd and the Scottish parliament. In the former, recent polling has suggested that the Green Party is likely to take at least one seat for the first time. Senior Welsh Greens tell me that, were they to do so, they would expect the Wales Green Party and English Green Party to amicably separate (currently the Wales Green party is an autonomous body within the Green Party of England and Wales).

Polanski’s comments come as the Welsh independence movement prepares for a major march in Ryhl in North East Wales, and as the Scottish Greens prepare to launch a new ‘bolder’ independence strategy at their conference this weekend. Support for Welsh independence sat at around 10% a decade ago, but has risen to roughly 40% in recent years, with an overwhelming majority of young people now supporting it. Support for Scottish independence is roughly 50%.

The Scottish Green Party has supported independence since it separated from the Green Party of England and Wales in 1990, and the Wales Green Party has supported full Welsh independence since 2020, but few English Green leaders have given such full-throated support for the break-up of the UK, instead tending to say it’s a matter for Scottish and Welsh Greens. While Polanski has previously spoken about support for proportional representation, and attacked “most politicians” over corporate lobbying and questionable donations, this interview represents his clearest criticism of Britain’s political system since his election as leader of his party.

The conversation, which you can read below, took place at the Greens’ conference in Bournemouth earlier this month, and in the context of far right groups flying George’s Crosses on lampposts across England, which triggered wider debate about Englishness.

Adam Ramsay: It’s the Welsh elections next year, and you’ve talked very actively about [Wales Green Party leader] Anthony Slaughter getting elected. Do you anticipate that the Welsh party will become independent in the next year or two?

Zack Polanski: [Wales Green Party’s] independence is not up to me, it’s ultimately got to be an issue for Wales Green Party. That being said, I personally support Welsh independence and it only makes sense to me that if Wales Green Party want to go at it alone that we maintain a really friendly relationship, we maintain informal ties, as we do with the Scottish Green Party, we all support each other as one family. But we support subsidiarity - power should be at the most local possible level. And that has to include a country.

AR: if the Welsh Greens become independent, that would leave you as the first person ever to lead an explicitly English party with MPs. How would you feel about that, and about being an explicitly English political leader.

ZP: “I think whether that happens or not, there is a whole conversation to be had about ‘what is Englishness? What is Britain? What is patriotism?’ All those conversations are happening - and obviously Caroline Lucas wrote a book about this [Another England, published in February 2025, looked at alternative stories about Englishness]. That’s not a conversation for me to solely lead or dictate what I think Englishness is. But I think there is an opportunity there for the party, if we were solely an English party to go ‘what is the message we’re sending to people about English history, and who we are? And, just because you were solely an English party would not mean that you don’t have close ties with Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and indeed places in the rest of the world.

“I think there is a really exciting narrative to be told about international solidarity across borders - that includes being proud of being who you are locally - there is nothing wrong with pride, locally we should be proud of who we are, that doesn’t have to be exclusionary to other people and places too. I think it would be an opportunity for more complexity and nuance in that conversation.”

AR: Are you in favour of English independence?

“It’s not on a personal level something I feel like I want to drive - I think that’s because independence often comes when you feel like you’re being oppressed by a greater power, as an English person, I don’t feel that. It’s not the thing I feel motivated to do. Having said that, if the circumstances meant that’s where we were, I think there’s a good opportunity there to create that story.

AR: Are you in favour of abolition of the monarchy?

“First of all, we need to start with the House of Lords - that needs to be abolished. There is a motion coming to conference [that there wasn’t time to discuss] about sortition for the House of Lords - I’m still open and curious to that conversation. More widely, citizens’ assemblies about what you do with the House of Lords is a conversation that I think would be really good.

“The number one thing I want people to know the Green Party cares about right now is inequality, the cost of living and lower bills. And I can’t think of any world where you wouldn’t want to abolish the monarchy while saying you think inequality is a problem - the monarchy is a clear symbol of the inequality that exists in our society. It’s not my number one priority because there’s lots of other things to do and we know the country is divided by how they feel about monarchy, but if the straight question is, ‘would I abolish the monarchy,’ yeah, absolutely.”

AR: When you look at trust in politics more generally, I have this worry that, when you talk to voters, they want all the nice things the Left offers, but they don’t trust the political system to deliver them. So when you say ‘we’re going to lower your bills,’ they just think ‘yeah, but you’re a politician, you’re lying to me’. And, the reason they think that is that they’ve seen our political system, and they’re not stupid. How do you address that question of trust in our politics if your message is purely about material concerns? How do you make people think you can deliver the lowering of the bills if you don’t also talk about the political system?

ZP: I think anything you do in politics or communication, you have to connect before you do anything else. I think the first point of connection is to recognise that people have been lied to, people have been screwed over, people have been cheated of their futures. And I think you have to start in that place that recognises that austerity has always been a lie, in terms of that it was ever going to be good for economic security or growth or anything in this country. Secondly, it starts at the local level, if people can get a taste at the local level, whether in the local council or more regionally, that getting involved with politics or getting involved with a campaign does result in tangible action or they can see, even if they don’t get the result they want, that a politician is engaging, and doing everything they can within the system, I think that’s how we rebuild trust - I don’t think that’s ever going to happen over night. The only way we’re going to rebuild trust is at the more local level.

AR: You sort of shied away from the English question…

ZP: “A lot of us, including myself, are slightly squeamish about Englishness, because of the associations both with empire, colonialism, and to the current day, with this kind of sense of being English has often been associated with a nationalist politics - including our flag sometimes - that hasn’t represented the kind of diverse, inclusive values that I have and I know the party has. And I accept your challenge. We can be squeamish about that and shy away from that, or we can can say ‘it doesn’t have to be that way, and we’ve allowed that ground to be occupied by the right and actually, what does a left wing, progressive, socialist - whatever term you use - Englishness look like?’ And how do we make sure everyone’s involved in that conversation? And I do think that’s really exciting. I just think, there are other places that are easier to start. And so, it makes sense to go to those other places first to build the arguments.

AR: I suppose the counter to that would be, Nigel Farage has occupied this sort of morbid, Anglo-British rotting imperial identity, and he’s claimed that for himself. And he’s shaping what that means. That is a structure of feeling that exists, particularly among people who have memory of the empire, from the boomer generation, who are clinging to that worldview. Englishness sits there, it was the first modern national identity, so every other national identity is referring to it, so it’s got this privileged position where it doesn’t have to talk about itself because it’s the default. It’s never been democratised, there’s no English parliament, so it ends up being defined by racists and bigots, but ultimately, England is a place, and an identity that’s never been democratised, and there is a huge - it seems to me - political opportunity there, that Caroline was writing about at the end of her time in parliament - and, a huge space for someone to step into, as part of a challenge to Farage. Can you be that person? You have become a very prominent figure on the English Left. If the Welsh Greens become independent - which seems very likely in the next year or two - you will become the first ever leader of an English party with MPs.

ZP: If that moment did happen, that would absolutely be the moment to really go with this. I suppose I’ve already been doing it in many ways, sometimes just not as intentional as the question you’re asking. I guess an example is, I’ve been very explicit about wanting to build relationships with farmers. Now, in reality, there aren’t that many farmers in this country, so in terms of a constituency, they are not a huge number. But the amount of nostalgia, and love, and sense of Englishness towards farming, particularly in rural communities, but also in cities too... So I think there is some really important stories about the land, which are tied to questions about who owns the land, to the Crown Estate, and who owns England - I’ve already put my foot in the water with some of those things, I just haven’t done it through the explicit frame of Englishness. And I suppose if the Green Party of England and Wales became the Green Party of England, that would be absolutely the moment to tell the story of England.

AR: You talked about patriotism in your speech [to the party conference]. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Green Party leader talk about patriotism before. You talked about ‘the country’ a lot. Which country?

ZP: It’s interesting, because, yesterday, we came number one in a poll in London. I said “Now, London, next, country”. And I said “it actually needs to be ‘countries’. And we often blur it into ‘country’ because it rhetorically sounds nicer. And I think it is an important distinction - sometimes we’re talking about the country, sometimes, we’re talking about the kingdom, sometimes, we’re talking about parts of England and parts of Wales but not the whole thing.

“This all links into the question of patriotism, because it means different things to different people. I interviewed Owen Jones last night. The question I asked him was, ‘I can take someone who has previously voted Reform. On almost every issue, I know I can turn them around. Immigration is one where, if I’m really pushed, I can give them the arguments, but I’m less convinced myself that those arguments are really hitting in the same way as the other arguments’, and he said ‘part of the thing is just not to accept the frame. Talk about the things - about lowering the bills about the things you’ve got in common’. And I feel like this about patriotism too.

“What I think the Lib Dems did was entirely accept the frame of the right. So, when I saw them waving flags around, Tim Farron draped in a flag, I can see why they did it, so it’s not an all-out criticism, but I think it was misguided. Patriotism isn’t going to come from more waving around of material. We need a much more deep, rooted conversion about who or what is this country(ies) and who is telling that story, and how do you tell that story in a way where, while you’re telling that story and having that complex conversation, you’re not giving more ground to the right because you’re in a frame they want to be in, but also not ignoring the question entirely.”

AR: You said you’re in favour of Welsh independence, as the party is, why?

ZP: “In the same way that, personally, I’m in favour of Scottish independence. Let me start in an unusual place. I feel this strongly in London - I’m not arguing for London independence, but there is often this idea that London gets too much money, but I think the real question though, is, why does London have so much wealth and power, but the mayor of London has so little ability to redistribute that power and wealth? And so I often say to Sadiq Khan, rather than asking for more money, why don’t you ask for more powers to be able to tax wealth, and redistribute it around London? I think it’s that same argument, but much more prominently with Wales.

“How can you have a country where they have to go with a begging bowl to the Westminster government? Which would be bad anyway, but we had a Conservative government, and now again a Labour government, that have demonstrated time and time again a complete resentment, a disrespect, an almost dismissive and exclusionary attitude towards the Welsh people. I think there are other, more nuanced things, that would outrage me - do outrage me, but would particularly if I was Welsh. Like the Barnett formula, with HS2, where they are being affected by decisions at Westminster, but then not getting any benefit from it economically or socially or culturally. And you could just keep listing things, but it just feels like they have just been hit so hard by a government which just doesn’t care about them.

“Increasingly, polling shows that there is surging, rising, increasing want for independence, and so how dare any English or British politician turn to Wales and go ‘oh you need us, and I’m going to give you scare stories about how, if you go off and do it on your own, we’ll make sure you don’t have the resources to do that’. We should be empowering our neighbours to be able to have everything that we want for ourselves, and that we want for them.”

AR: the polls show that the Welsh election next year, as well as getting at least one Green Senedd member, will also produce a Plaid Cymru led government. There’s likely to be a majority of MSPs elected in Scotland in favour if independence, there’s already a Sinn Féin first minister in Northern Ireland. How do you think, you can imagine, as leader of the Green Party in England, responding to that moment, where the politics of the break-up of the UK is likely to become central, in a way it hasn’t been since 2014?

ZP: “I also think that election is a reflection of England, in terms of a failing Labour administration which has failed to connect, particularly with working class communities who are resentful, understandably so, and looking for an alternative to a failed establishment politics, and are considering moving to the right, but also considering moving to the Left, when we turn up and connect. In terms of how I would respond, that would be led by Anthony Slaughter, leader of the Wales Green Party. If he was asking for my advice, my advice would be - I was on a panel last week with Leanne Wood, and Beth Winter, former Labour MP [now in YourParty] - it was very clear how much alignment there was between the three of us. There was almost nothing we disagreed on. People can work together.”