Zack Polanski will be sixth Green MP after Holborn and St Pancras by-election, Rachel Millward claims
The Green Party's deputy leader made the comments in an interview with LFF at TUC Congress
Zack Polanski will win the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, the Green Party’s deputy leader Rachel Millward has claimed. She made the comments in an interview with Left Foot Forward at this year’s TUC Congress in Brighton.
When asked what she thought was going to happen in the by-election, Millward was clear – she said Polanski was “going to be the sixth Green MP”.
Pressed on whether she was certain of this, Millward went on to tell Left Foot Forward: “We’ve got a fantastic ground campaign. I was there on Saturday – hundreds of people coming, massive energy on the ground.”
She would go on to concede that “there are a lot of people who aren’t decided”, but added: “what’s really clear is that when people understand that they can give Burnham a chance and also get a sixth Green MP. And actually the impact of that is that they then might get the Burnham they actually want. When that lands, people understand it. They really do.”
While some in the media have been getting over-excited about what might happen if Polanski doesn’t win the by-election, Millward downplayed this. She told LFF: “We would absolutely just continue to do the work that we’re doing”, adding: “There is no way that the the the message and the demands of the Green Party are going to seem irrelevant over the rest of this Labour term.”
Millward was at TUC Congress to speak at a fringe meeting hosted by the Green Party. The meeting was organised to explain the Green Party Workers’ Charter.
The Charter was launched in May 2026 and sets out the Green Party’s policy commitments on workers’ rights, pay, pay and trade unions. Among them are a £15 an hour minimum wage, a pay ratio no greater than 10:1 in all organisations, ‘fairer parental leave’, and the scrapping of all anti-union laws introduced since 1979.
Speaking to LFF about the Charter, Millward said that what she wanted to “really emphasise today is that all of this has been in our policy since the 1990s” and that to “make sure that everyone does realise that we were the PEOPLE Party before we were the Ecology Party”. She added that “care for workers’ rights” is “literally in our roots, the DNA of the party”.
Alongside Millward, BFAWU general secretary Sarah Wooley and Meg de Meo from Unite also addressed the fringe meeting.
Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward
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