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

Green party of England and Wales leader, Zack Polanski, has told Australian counterparts they need to understand voters’ pain, not just offer solutions. Photograph: Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Green party of England and Wales leader, Zack Polanski, has told Australian counterparts they need to understand voters’ pain, not just offer solutions. Photograph: Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images English Green party leader Zack Polanski tells Australian colleagues to ‘connect with anger’ to counter rightwing populism Australian Greens should ‘take on’ Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, Polanski tells Victorian conference, just as he took on Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast 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. Max Chandler-Mather on a hopeful progressive populism - podcast Read more 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. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email “People are feeling more and more angry, more and more disillusioned – and more and more ready for change,” he said. “I think what we’ve not necessarily been great at, as progressives though, is connecting with that anger. I think sometimes we rush to hope, we rush to solutions, so we don’t quite connect in the same way. “But if you can recognise the pain people are feeling right now, the struggle people are feeling right now, if you can connect to that … and then be able to offer people solutions, that is so powerful,” Polanski said. Polanski said progressives should separate the leaders of rightwing parties from those who might be considering voting for them. “I would imagine that a lot of people who are thinking about voting for them could actually be Green voters,” he said. “They are people who are rejecting establishment politics, who want to see something different – who might have issues with some of your policies – but actually on those core messages around cost of living, around inequality, those are the things that they are worried about.” The Green party is fresh from electoral victories in England and Wales including a historic byelection victory in February , alongside strong results for the independent Scottish Greens , but polling also indicates the once minor Reform UK is now the main party on the right. The Victorian Greens leader, Ellen Sandell, sa