Green Party leader Zack Polanski has declared that he would vote for Scottish independence if he were Scottish, saying Scotland had been “screwed over by Westminster governments for a long time” and that the UK Government had no right to block a second referendum on the country’s future.
Speaking at an event in Glasgow on Thursday evening, Polanski launched a direct attack on Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who recently reaffirmed that the Labour government would refuse to grant a second independence referendum even if the SNP wins a majority at Scottish Parliament elections on 7 May. “Who the hell does Wes Streeting think he is?” Polanski told the audience, accusing the Cabinet minister of treating Scots “like you were children.”
The Green leader was unambiguous about his own position. “If I was Scottish I would vote for independence. I would look at what this Government has done and how it has treated Scotland,” he said, adding that keeping Scotland in the UK “against their own will, not to be able to have an independence referendum, is not good for Scotland.”
Polanski framed his argument around a broader case about democratic self-determination, arguing that people everywhere should have the right to decide how their country is governed. He also pointed to economic grievances, describing a “toxic combination of low wages and high bills” hitting people across Scotland particularly hard amid the ongoing cost of living crisis.
The Glasgow appearance forms part of Polanski’s effort to position himself and the Green Party as a credible political force across the UK, not just in English urban centres. He drew explicit parallels between the political moment in Scotland and the rise of what he described as “eco-socialism” internationally, citing New York’s newly elected left-wing mayor Zohran Mamdani as evidence of a growing global appetite for his brand of politics. “It’s happening south of the border, here, it’s happening with the Scottish Greens, it’s happening with Zohran Mamdani in New York,” he said.
It emerged this week that Polanski had held online meetings with members of Mamdani’s campaign team to study how the New York mayor used high-quality video content to drive his “tax the rich” message on social media, with the Green leader understood to be looking at adopting similar techniques.
Since taking over as Green Party leader in England and Wales in September last year, Polanski has overseen significant membership growth, with the party now claiming 225,000 members — including what he described as a “huge surge from disillusioned Labour members.” The Scottish Greens, who share a broadly similar political outlook, now have more than 10,000 members of their own.
