Lambeth is crying out for change, Zack Polanski tells packed Brixton rally

The Green Party leader singled out Steve Reed, who ran Lambeth Council from 2006 to 2012 and is now MP for Streatham and Croydon North and Secretary of State for …

Apr 26, 2026 - 07:03

Lambeth is crying out for change, Zack Polanski tells packed Brixton rally

The Green Party leader singled out Steve Reed, who ran Lambeth Council from 2006 to 2012 and is now MP for Streatham and Croydon North and Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, in a stinging indictment of a Labour Party that he said represented “corporations and big business” over communities.

Addressing a 150-strong rally of Lambeth Greens, candidates and supporters in St Matthew’s Church garden, Brixton yesterday, his speech was halted by cheering and applause as he told the crowd that almost every single failure of Keir Starmer’s government had originated as a project in the borough.

When the clapping died down, he continued:

“Their playbook of neoliberalism, of standing for corporations and big business rather than communities.

Their playbook of talking about big buildings and big projects that no one will ever live in, because they will become unaffordable luxury apartments that will be sold to foreign investors.

That all started right here in Lambeth.” – Zack Polanski, Green Party leader.

*[Zack Polanski speaks in St Matthews’ Brixton 25.04.26]*

The Green answer, he said, was straightforward: “We need council housing. We need decent homes, affordable homes, and we need rent controls.”

Taking direct aim at Labour council closures of libraries and community centres, linking them to increasing rhetoric on immigration and integration used by Labour politicians, he said:

“How do you expect people to integrate if you shut down their libraries, shut down their community centres, shut down places where people can agree, or even disagree together?”

Turning his fire on austerity, Polanski reminded the crowd that amidst the cutbacks, the fifty wealthiest families in the country owned more wealth than 34 million people:

“I’ve not heard so much recently from Lambeth Labour councillors about austerity. But it is still hurting people. In fact, it’s hurting people more because of the effects of how long it’s been going on.”

Polanski then posed the question of who Labour councils actually answer to: “Where is the money coming from, and who are they making those decisions on behalf of?”

The Greens, by contrast, would never take money from “dirty donors” – naming oil and gas, private healthcare, gambling, and the arms trade.

It was Starmer himself, Polanski said, who had made these local elections international, by launching the campaign with the claim the UK had had no involvement in the war in Iran.

Yet US bombers were still using UK airbases. Furthermore, on Gaza, Polanski said:

“A genocide in Gaza, that we’ve seen going on for years now, where we are still selling arms, sharing intelligence. And the Green Party have been clear from the very beginning and will continue to be.

It is time to end the genocide.”

This was the same Prime Minister, he continued, who had brought Peter Mandelson “into the heart of government” and refused to take responsibility.

Polanski closed to huge applause across St Matthew’s Church gardens:

“Let’s make sure that we turn Lambeth Green.

Then we turn London Green, because that’s exactly how eventually we’re going to turn our country Green.” – Zack Polanski, Green Party leader.”