Zack Polanski stumbles at first hurdle as Green Party falls below predictions set out by polls in first real electoral test

The Green Party has fallen short of its own expectations in its first real electoral test, thanks to a series of mixed results from Zack Polanski’s group of radical Leftists.

The party made gains in inner-city strongholds in local elections but has struggled to deliver on the ‘Green wave’ of councilors that ‘swept England and Wales’ that Mr Polanski predicted in March.

While the Greens won 555 local council seats from a base of 141 nationally in recent polls, last night they looked likely to fall some 100 short of such a figure.

But they still chipped away at Labor votes to add to Sir Keir Starmer’s nightmare.

The Greens won the first two mayoral seats, taking control of Norwich City Council and ousting the Labor leader of Camden Council in Sir Keir’s Holborn and St Pancras constituencies.

They also won 31 seats directly from Labor in Waltham Forest, east London, forming their first council in the capital.

But as an insurgent party experiencing a sudden surge in support, they found it difficult to translate momentum into seats.

The lack of a targeted approach and recent anti-Semitism scandals have seen the Greens lose votes in many places, draining Labour’s support and helping other parties such as Reform.

Zoe Garbett (pictured left) won the Hackney mayoralty for the Greens with 35,720 votes, leaving Labor incumbent Caroline Woodley with just 26,865 votes

Polling guru Sir John Curtice said yesterday that ‘a good performance from the Greens would be more damaging to Labor than a good performance from Reform’ because the Greens ‘are more likely to win votes from Labour’.

Revealing just how far voters have gone against Sir Keir, Zoe Garbett took the Hackney mayoralty for the Greens with 35,720 votes, leaving Labor incumbent Caroline Woodley with just 26,865 votes.

Ms Garbett’s victory deals another historic blow to Labor, which has held the post since it was created in 2002.

The party also took Hackney council from Labor, winning 29 of 57 seats (up from just two last time), with Labor losing 27 seats from its previous 35 seats.

Mr Polanski called it a ‘historic victory’ and added: ‘Two-party politics is not just dead, it’s dead and buried.’

Green candidate Liam Shrivastava also won the mayoralty of Lewisham, south London. He received 35,265 votes, nearly 40 percent.

The new Hackney mayor used his winning speech to bash Labor over its stance on Gaza, which has suffered a haemorrhage of support in recent months.

Among Sir Keir’s failures in government, he claimed Labor lost because it ‘supported genocide’ in Gaza. But the Greens’ anti-Semitism crisis, repeatedly exposed by the Daily Mail, appeared to limit the party’s success.

Last week this newspaper revealed that the party was investigating more than 30 candidates for hateful comments ahead of local elections.

Conservative Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said on Friday that ‘the outward appearance of Zack Polanski’s Green Party shows that it is toxic to its core’ and that ‘the Green Party has created the conditions that welcome all these candidates’.