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The Owen Jones Podcast

‘WE’LL REPLACE LABOUR' - Zack Polanski

The Owen Jones Podcast

Owen Jones

Politics, Government, News & Politics, News

4.41.4K Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2026

⏱️ 19 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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Transcript

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0:00.0

So I am joined with, a man you may have heard something about.

0:04.3

Zach Valensky is the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, not slept, entirely powered by adrenaline, I would imagine this point.

0:11.3

Why does this matter?

0:12.9

Some people go by elections, smile elections.

0:15.9

Why does this change things?

0:17.7

It matters usually because this is going to transform the face of British politics. And before specifying exactly why, I think the alternatives are worth looking at. So we could be waking up today to a Labour win. They could have held on. We know Kirstama would have taken that as, I might be unpopular, but you know, at the end of the day, the left have got nowhere to go. People have got no alternative will just keep on going. And that would have been absolutely disastrous for the entire political system because we would have just carried on through years of this slutch.

0:43.6

Alternatively, the unthinkable could have happened.

0:45.5

We could have got a pretty awful grifter extremist from reform as the new MP.

0:51.2

And that would have been deeply dangerous in terms of just the thought of Nigel Farage

0:55.4

all over TV this morning being insufferable would have been awful but also Kirstama would have

1:00.5

taken that as you know I just haven't been right wing enough there's not enough migrants or trans

1:04.1

people I haven't made their life harder so you know I'm going to just get even worse but what's

1:08.9

actually happened is a local clumber and it's important to to say, by the way, there's the politics of this. And then there's a side note that Hannah Spencer is just bloody incredible. And that really matters. Like, it matters with the Green Party and anyone in the Green Party. But frankly, I think it matters for the country. That there's now an incredibly articulate working class woman who is going to be in parliament,

1:28.4

holding people to account, who also, by the way, is incredibly funny.

1:31.8

And I think that's understated in politics too when someone can cut through with humor.

1:36.6

And so there's a few things that have gone on here.

1:38.2

There's the kind of wider political context where the Green Party now have, they've shown

1:42.9

that they can defeat both reform and Labor and

1:45.3

elections. The Labor can no longer use the wasted vote argument or vote for us because of this

1:49.8

other scary party. Because we've demonstrated where you vote Green, when we're resourced on the

1:54.7

ground, when nearly 2,000 volunteers came out yesterday, we win. And then there's the much more kind

2:00.0

of short-term thing. I've just

...

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