English Green party leader Zack Polanski tells Australian colleagues to ‘connect with anger’ to counter rightwing populism

Key Takeaways

• Zack Polanski, the leader of the Green party of England and Wales, has told his counterparts in Australia that they need to start “connecting with people’s anger” and learn from the “storytelling power” of populist rightwing politics.
• Speaking via video link at the Victorian Greens campaign conference on Saturday night, Zack Polanski said the party in Australia needed to start “taking on” Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, just as his own party had taken on Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
• The political right, he said, had been “very, very good at connecting to people’s anger, fuelling it, and that makes things happen quicker”.
• Progressives have a responsibility not to fuel that anger, Polanski said, but they should be listening and talking about it.
• “People are feeling more and more angry, more and more disillusioned – and more and more ready for change,” he said.