Plus: Lib Dem quits frontbench in bid to oust Ed Davey
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Kate Devlin, Whitehall Editor
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Kate Devlin, Whitehall Editor
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What a difference a year makes.
This time 12 months ago, Zack Polanski had just been elected leader of the Green Party.
Under his stewardship, the party initially climbed in the polls and its membership soared.
Now, however, he is facing calls to stand down after he failed to win a seat in Parliament in a key by-election, amid a damaging row over a party conference motion that declared Zionism a form of racism.
The leader of the Jewish Greens, Vivien Lichtenstein, has called for Mr Polanski to go.
Another long-term senior party figure told the Independent that the situation was “untenable”.
And former leader Caroline Lucas has accused him of a failure of leadership.
For now, Mr Polanski insists he will “carry on” – but for how long?
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Europe: The Way Back | Wednesday
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What else you need to know
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Zack Polanski has failed Caroline Lucas’s leadership test |
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John Rentoul, Chief Political Commentator
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John Rentoul, Chief Political Commentator
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Caroline Lucas, the former Green leader, refused to say whether she thought her successor should stand down after his by-election defeat: “We should see what happens. I want him to show the leadership that was missing on Sunday.”
In a BBC interview this morning, the populist Green Party leader refused to say that Israel has a right to exist, and conflated its current government with the state. Even Jeremy Corbyn could have done better than that.
His election defeat is irrelevant. As he pointed out, the voters there “wanted to give Andy Burnham a chance”. Labour governments rarely hold seats in by-elections, but there was a comparable win in Ealing Southall in Gordon Brown’s honeymoon in 2007.
The Greens can recover from the loss. Polanski himself, however, may never recover from failing the test set by Caroline Lucas.
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