If Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in The Brothers Karamazov that “God and the Devil are fighting and the battlefield is the heart of each man,” today we could paraphrase the Russian author: the far right and progressivism are in constant conflict across the globe and the battlefield is each person’s mind. Figures such as Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and Javier Milei dominate the political landscape, yet they are increasingly countered from the left by figures like Zohran Mamdani, Bernie Sanders, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, or the leaders of Die Linke in Germany.
In the middle, traditional parties are creaking and disruptive figures are emerging inside and outside the established structures, each playing by their own rules. In Argentina, perhaps the clearest national example is Juan Grabois who, burdened by Kirchnerism, was crushed politically; and at the local level, Juan Monteverde in Rosario. Milei himself has reacted to this phenomenon: on his most recent trip to the United States, in Miami, he referred to the so-called “Riesgo Kuka” or “risk of socialism,” targeting Mamdani in particular, whom he accused of being a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
In the United Kingdom, a kind of ‘English Mamdani’ has emerged: a figure as atypical as he is striking and compelling, seeking to respond to the same problems as Mamdani with similar solutions: low wages, drawing attention to precarious work, high-living costs and housing problems, which can be addressed through taxing the rich, along with environmental concern for climate change.
Zack Polanski – an environmental activist, gay, vegan and former actor – may appear to be a sort of woke caricature invented by the far right, but he is gaining traction among young voters and is now making the UK’s Labour Party anxious. At this very moment, the ruling party sees Nigel Farage’s far right advancing – it now also sees its support trimmed by Polanski. Why is this growth from two new parties – one far-right and one “ecosocialist” – shaking the world’s oldest two-party system?
At heart, many Britons – particularly those in the industrial North, in Wales, in the Midlands and across much of Scotland – feel that quality of life never returned to pre-Thatcher levels. And this is not abstract: it is reflected in concrete indicators that have accumulated since the 1980s. Margaret Thatcher closed mines, steelworks, shipyards and entire industrial ecosystems.
The official story was that the country was being “modernised,” but in practice those regions never again produced high-quality employment. Tony Blair, far from reversing it, merely managed the situation with palliative measures. For those communities, the idea of “living well” (stable wages, strong unions, affordable housing, reliable public services) died in that era. The English industrial North mirrors the American Rust Belt, that abandoned industry that propelled Trump to power, despite his industrial policy being the opposite of Milei’s or Thatcher’s. This is of particular interest to us, because Argentina’s President is an outspoken admirer of Thatcher.
Let us recall something from the archives: in his presidential debate with Sergio Massa, regarding the conflict between Britain and Argentina over the Malvinas (Falklands) Islands, Milei declared: “I identify with Churchill and Thatcher. Mrs Thatcher was a great leader.” Milei admires Thatcher and if one analyses their thinking, they share many common points: the market as the organising centre of society, extreme individualism and an assault on trade union structures. But the country Thatcher left behind is the root of today’s British discontent.
This discontent has led Britons to fumble for solutions, generating increasingly unusual political effects in a land accustomed to stability. Brexit was far more than a commercial or geopolitical rupture: it was the emotional platform that catapulted Farage and British national-populism to its moment of greatest influence since the Thatcher era.
For years, Farage built an entire movement on the promise of “taking back control,” exploiting the economic anxiety of a society suffering from wage stagnation, underfunded public services and unprecedented inequality. When the UK eventually left the European Union, the narrative seemed complete: Farage had become not only the political architect of the Leave campaign but the official interpreter of British anger.
However, the economic consequences of Brexit – trade barriers, falling investment, imported inflation, loss of European workers, stagnating growth – produced something unexpected: a political vacuum. It wasn’t filled by the right that had promised prosperity but by a generation of leaders who understand that the country is not only exhausted but disoriented.
Enter Zack Polanski. The new leader of the Green Party is almost the perfect inverse of Farage. Where the former UKIP and Reform leader bets on nationalism and identity rupture, Polanski proposes an economic and moral reconstruction of the UK from a very different narrative: openness, social rights, a green transition and a sense of community that transcends isolation. But his stance on Europe perhaps best captures the contrast. Polanski argues that Brexit was a mistake and that the country should return to the European Union.
Polanski expresses it with surgical precision: he does not deny the referendum result or insult those who voted to leave; he recognises it was a democratic decision, but stresses that many now would rethink it in light of the obvious economic damage. His approach is pragmatic, he doesn’t shout “Rejoin!” as a militant slogan but he does outline a clear political path: opening a national conversation on re-entering the EU, potentially via a new referendum or even by incorporating it into the Green Party manifesto, if the political conditions allow.
In recent interviews, Polanski went further still: he stated that the end of free movement – one of Farage’s flagship policies – has been a disaster for Britain, hurting the labour market, productivity and economic vitality. His style is neither apologetic nor professorial; it is direct, empathetic, almost therapeutic. Criticising Brexit is not presented as settling scores with the past, but as common sense: the country is worse off, it could be better, and returning to Europe is one of the ways to stabilise it.
The contrast couldn’t be starker. Farage emerged from fracture and amplified it. Polanski emerges from the exhaustion of that fracture and seeks to overcome it. Both are products of the same phenomenon – the long decline of the UK’s economic model born under Thatcher – yet they represent opposing responses. Where Thatcher initiated a cycle of deindustrialisation, privatisation and union-weakening that produced structural inequality, low growth and public services in permanent crisis, Farage offered Europe as the scapegoat.
Polanski, instead, offers a more complex diagnosis: Britain’s economy needs reintegration with the world, reconstruction of its welfare state and a rethinking of its productive model – not one that rejects globalisation but one that regulates it and uses it to the country’s advantage. With all differences considered, Britain turning its back on the EU is akin to Argentina turning its back on Brazil.
Polanski, like Mamdani, also frames migrant identity as an ideological battleground. Mamdani, who emigrated from Uganda, maintains and showcases his roots in a context where the far right clings to a traditional nationalist perspective that rejects immigrants.
Polanski, born David Paulden, changed his surname to “Polanski” when he was young to “recover” a surname from his Eastern European ancestors. If the far right around Farage blames immigrants for every problem, the progressive left uses migration as a banner of identity.
In this new battle for Britain’s political soul, Polanski is not just a charismatic green leader: he is a sign that the Farage era may have reached its ceiling. Brexit left behind visible wounds; Polanski represents those who no longer seek to justify them but to heal them. And in a country where resignation had become the norm, that marks – finally – a change in atmosphere.
Comparing this phenomenon with figures like Mamdani in New York, the reconfiguration of the left in Germany (with the saga of Die Linke and the emergence of Sahra Wagenknecht), or with declining leaderships in Latin America such as Jeannette Jara in Chile, is an attempt to read the same political storm across different geographies: the sense that the classic social democracy versus conservatism framework no longer answers people’s increasingly urgent demands.
Polanski embodies the shift from “nice green” politics to a form of eco-populism. He is not an apostle of the countryside and bicycles for their own sake: he links environmental demands with housing, wages, targeted nationalisations and the regulation of oligopolies. This combination makes his politics sound less like moral instruction and more like a fair distribution of costs and benefits: if the energy transition has a price, let the wealthy pay it, not working people.
This idea, with its nuances, allows him to compete for constituencies that until now belonged to Labour or other forces on the left. The British press has already adjusted its analysis: Polanski is “coming for” Labour’s disaffected voters, insisting both on criticism of the economic establishment and on concrete measures promising immediate relief (housing, wealth taxes, price controls on essential services).
As for the polling numbers, it is best not to obsess over a single figure. Recent waves show the Greens at levels unusual in their recent history. Depending on the poll and methodology, the Greens appear somewhere between 11 percent and 18 percent in various national samples, with specific polls (YouGov and other aggregators) placing them around 16 percent at some recent points.
These figures have two sides. On one hand, it is a phenomenon in full growth without a clear ceiling; on the other, volatility is high – part of the supposed “boom” may be driven by temporary dynamics (distrust of major parties, impacts of specific crises). But the trend is real: rapid growth from low percentages towards numbers that, if consolidated, would force Britain’s electoral map to be rewritten.
Polanski’s communications strategy deserves a chapter of its own. It is not only about headlines or TV appearances: his communication is hybrid, designed for digital times and fragmented audiences. First pillar: direct, jargon-free language. He turns complex policies into everyday demands: “hold water companies to account,” “tax the super-rich,” “more public investment in housing.” Second pillar: media performance. Coming from a background of theatre and activism, Polanski knows how to use gestures and high-rating interviews to land messages. Third pillar: focus on social media and youth. The Young Greens and their digital apparatus have scaled up with short, visual and viral content. Fourth pillar: strategic “triangulation.” A mix of confrontation with traditional leaders (he rejects automatic pacts with Keir Starmer) and openness to tactical alliances with new left forces when advantageous.
This mixture gives him elasticity: he can appear as a disruptor against old politics while presenting himself as a concrete solution to immediate problems. And this brings us to Jeremy Corbyn, who a few years ago was once the UK’s version of Bernie Sanders.
A disruptive figure from within Labour who came close to contesting power, Corbyn fell short. He stepped down as party leader in 2020 after electoral defeats and deep internal tensions. Corbyn’s recent attempt to refound the left through a new “real alternative” party has not fully taken off: there is ambiguity about its institutional identity, criticism of his personalised leadership and operational difficulties in turning his emotional base into a solid political structure.
In contrast, Polanski has risen within the Green Party with a bold discourse: a combination of social justice, popular ecology and economic redistribution. He is not a “moral green,” but a one talking about housing, wages, nationalising services and making the wealthy pay for the ecological transition. This resonates especially with a generation exhausted by climate crisis, precarity and inequality.
Placing Polanski alongside Mamdani clarifies two things: form and content. Mamdani, young, community-minded, with a record in local politics and a democratic socialist profile, built his political capital through tackling concrete urban issues (housing, transport, services) combined with a grassroots rhetoric that centres economic conflict.
The two share the desire to transform social anger into programmes, but they differ institutionally. Mamdani has demonstrated electoral strength in a municipal/state context within Democratic Party structures and within the Democratic Socialists of America. Polanski, meanwhile, operates within a small party but one with potential for national growth. Mamdani does not do “eco-populism” exactly; he does redistributional populism and has shown great ability in turning local demands into legislative victories. Polanski uses environmentalism as the framework that justifies redistribution. A useful comparison: Mamdani represents the municipal-organising left; Polanski the national-ecological left.
Looking to continental Europe, Die Linke in Germany offers a double reading. On the one hand, it was for years the home of a left-wing force with a clear programme – a welfare state, enhanced regulation, defence of wages – that failed to translate into mass appeal outside certain regions. On the other hand, its internal crisis (and implosion as figures like Wagenknecht launched new formations) shows how difficult it is to balance radical credentials with electoral ambition.
What Polanski shares with parts of Die Linke is the attempt to re-legitimise left politics among those who fear losing jobs or housing: both seek to lower the moralising tone of “pure green” or doctrinaire leftism and foreground tangible problems. Yet Die Linke suffered from internal identity tensions and alliance dilemmas; Polanski, if he wants to grow, will face the same question: radicalism for loyalty, or pragmatism for expansion?
Britain’s current economic situation forms Polanski’s breeding ground. After recent episodes of high inflation, uneven post-pandemic recovery and a persistent productivity problem – flagged by bodies from the UK’s Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – millions of households feel that the economy is “not working for them,” even if certain macro figures improve. Real wages have been central to the debate: employment has recovered, but purchasing power has eroded over the last decade, alongside rising housing, energy and service costs.
Recent reports underline that the UK’s GDP growth has not translated into improvement for the most vulnerable households, and that, under energy or interest-rate shocks, fragility is high. This material discomfort is politically fertile ground for a message that says: “It’s not just the climate; it’s the economy. And if the system won’t redistribute, someone has to.”
Here the historical debate returns: what connection does today’s context have with the changes introduced by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s? The answer is not monocausal, but the legacy is clear. Thatcher inaugurated a profound reorganisation: deregulation, privatisation of public assets, reduction of union power, and a bet on the market as the central engine. These shifts not only reshaped the productive structure (more services, less heavy industry) but recalibrated expectations of the state: less intervention, more reliance on markets, and therefore greater exposure of households and workers to market fluctuations.
Since then, successive governments have softened or deepened these reforms, but the basic architecture – market at the centre, compressed public networks – still conditions the state’s capacity to respond to economic crises. The accumulated result is an economy with strong returns for certain financial and corporate sectors but with wage stagnation, housing pressure and a widespread sense of precarity that fuels disruptive politics.
Here lies the origin of a discontent expressed in contradictory political phenomena: from Brexit as a political earthquake blaming immigrants and globalisation, from a libertarian prime minister who lasted two weeks (Liz Truss) to the first prime minister of Indian descent (Rishi Sunak), from Corbyn to Farage and now Polanski.
The UK, long a cradle of political and economic stability, veers back and forth because the structure inherited from Thatcherism continues to generate dissatisfaction among the social majority, interpreted sometimes by the right and sometimes by the left. This is particularly interesting for us in Argentina because our President admires Thatcher. Far from leaving behind a more stable and prosperous country, for many Britons the Conservative Party leader marked the rupture of a wellbeing they never recovered. Indeed, little known is the fact that Thatcher left office before time.
The Community Charge – popularly known as the “Poll Tax” – was a deeply unpopular tax reform replacing the local property tax with a flat per-person charge regardless of income or wealth. In practice: a millionaire paid the same as an unemployed person. This triggered an unprecedented social reaction: between 1989 and 1990 there were huge marches, mass boycotts and riots, especially in Scotland and London. It ultimately caused a rebellion within the Conservatives, which withdrew its support and brought an end to the Thatcher era.
Returning to the present, does this mean Polanski is the British version of a “new left-wing populism” destined to triumph?
It’s not that simple. Two clear limits remain: organisational capacity and governability. The Green Party has historically been weak in electoral infrastructure (intense activism but few institutional networks comparable to Labour). Rising in the polls is one thing; turning that into MPs, local power or eventually ministerial roles is another.
Moreover, the UK’s coalition logic punishes fragmentation: if the Greens rise but cannot convert this into majorities or firm agreements, their proposals risk being excluded from the decision-making process. They may instead force Labour leftwards and in that scenario Polanski will have gained influence without needing to govern. That is less dramatic but politically significant.
Finally, the lessons from comparison: Mamdani, Die Linke and Jara offer both strategies and warnings. Mamdani shows the power of local praxis and governance; Die Linke reveals the fragility of identity when a party grows without resolving internal tensions; Jara shows the value of institutional coalitions for turning policies into actionable measures. Polanski learns from all three: he aims to contest both local and national arenas with simple language, to overcome the historical solitude of the “green” by turning it into a mass party and to use communication as a source of legitimacy. If he can build an apparatus and turn polling into structure, his impact could be deep; if not, he risks becoming a surge of enthusiasm absorbed or neutralised by the larger parties.
Ultimately, Polanski expresses a political moment in which ecology stops being a moral luxury and becomes a practical argument for redistribution; where economic precarity makes housing and wage demands inseparable from the energy transition; and where the Thatcherite legacy creates fertile ground for a discourse promising “ecology with bread on the table.” The polls give Polanski real momentum today (surveys placing the Greens around 16 percent are no small thing). His communication is agile and adaptive and his main challenge will be to turn visibility into institutional power, without losing the identity that made him appealing.
If he succeeds, Polanski will have more in common with Mamdani and the successful currents of the left than with the remnants of the old Greens. If he fails, he will still serve as a warning: in post-Thatcher times, economic crises demand big answers – and politics is recalibrating who can offer them.
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