This weekend in Bournemouth, there will be a celebration of a political success story as Zack Polanski, the Green Party’s new leader, oversees his first annual conference.

The 42-year-old charismatic leader, known for his vegan lifestyle, is being compared to a ‘Farage of the Left.’ He believes that the economy has been unfairly set up to benefit the wealthy elite and has recently attracted a large following on social media with his bold statements about supporting the ’99 percent.’

This week, Polanski’s brand of ‘eco-populism’ has propelled the Green Party to match the Liberal Democrats in the polls, and they have reached their 80,000th member. There has been much discussion about a potential alliance with Jeremy Corbyn and his group of dissatisfied Labour MPs.

Time Magazine has recognized him as one of the world’s ‘100 most influential rising stars,’ highlighting leaders who are shaping the future across various fields, including business, entertainment, and politics.

The American magazine praised him as the ‘first out gay man’ to head a British political party and lauded his mission to ‘reclaim progressive patriotism.’ Meanwhile, The Guardian believes his emergence signals hope for a fresh approach to politics.

Despite a few minor setbacks, such as the difficult attempt to defend his deputy Mothin Ali’s controversial comments about Israel on a recent broadcast, Polanski, once an activist with Extinction Rebellion, has had a remarkable rise.

After all, prior to launching his leadership campaign in May, Polanski boasted little real profile outside the Westminster bubble.

A member of the London Assembly since 2021, who gained a mere 1.7 per cent of the vote in his only prior attempt to stand in Parliament, he was instead primarily known for two highly peculiar appearances in the news pages.

One, in 2019, saw him launch a comically entitled broadside about the catering facilities in police cells, after being arrested while leading an eco-protest that had stopped traffic crossing Westminster bridge.

‘I’m a vegan and they were pretty bad about getting me some vegan food,’ he complained. ‘If you are going to arrest 300 activists, you have got to think about getting some vegan food ready. There was no soy milk, either, so I had to have my tea black.’

The other occurred in 2013, when Polanski (whose boyfriend Richie Bryan is an NHS worker) had temporarily parked his principles regarding socialised medicine to earn a shilling by working as a hypnotherapist at a posh Harley Street clinic.

Speaking to a female reporter from The Sun newspaper, Polanski made a surreal claim: he could use hypnosis to help women increase the size of their bosoms by harnessing the power of the mind. ‘This is an extremely new approach, but I can see it becoming popular very quickly, because it’s so safe and a lot cheaper than a boob job,’ he declared.

In recent interviews, he’s repeatedly apologised for the incident, claiming to have been young and foolish (he was 30 at the time) and managing instead to steer the conversation on to his somewhat unorthodox life.

The details, on this front, go as follows: Polanski was allegedly born in Salford to impeccably working-class Jewish parents, who divorced when he was young. ‘His mum is an actor, his dad works in a DIY shop,’ read a fawning recent Guardian interview, which then quoted Polanski delivering a light-hearted dig to Sir Keir Starmer: ‘I’m not the son of a tool-maker, I’m the son of a tool-seller.’

Despite this difficult start in life, he claims that academic talent helped him gain a place at Stockport Grammar School, thanks to a scholarship.

Yet he claims to have been deeply unhappy at the private establishment, which today charges almost £19,000 a year in fees, and was ‘kicked out’ after GCSEs, having allegedly ‘been a little bit too cheeky’ to teachers.

After that, Polanski attended a local sixth-form college, where this working-class hero realised he was far happier among the proletariat. ‘I remember absolutely loving it and thriving, and suddenly going: “Oh, this is what diversity feels like. This is what it feels like when everyone’s not homogeneous,” ’ he recently alleged.

So far, so inspiring. Were it entirely true. But the most basic research reveals the Green Party leader’s real background turns out to be significantly less humble than he’d have us believe.

Zack Polanski was born David Stephen Paulden (he later changed his name via deed poll). But his family don’t appear to have been particularly impoverished.

Father Philip in 1984 set up Beronsand Limited, which lists its business as ‘buying and selling of real estate’. On Companies House documents, he described his occupation as ‘director,’ as opposed to shop worker. Mother Ava was also a director of the firm, but resigned in 1992, having split from Philip. She remarried, for the third time, to one David Barrie in 1993, when Zack was 11.

Beronsand’s financial clout is unclear, since it has only ever filed abbreviated accounts, but around the time Polanski was at private secondary school it was listing a bank balance in the tens of thousands of pounds, plus interests in a string of investment properties in Wythenshawe, Greater Manchester, including three homes next door to each other.

Philip, the alleged ‘tool-seller,’ has also worked as a photographer and is a member of the Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers and the British Press Photographers Association.

How much loot this all brought in is unclear, but there was sufficient family cash for Polanski’s two older half-siblings to also attend private school: Pierre Paulden, who was a product of Ava’s prior marriage (but took Paul’s surname) went to Manchester Grammar; half-sister Francesca went to Hulme Grammar in Oldham.

Today both enjoy life in the very upper echelons of what class warrior Zack likes to call the ‘99 per cent’. Pierre is a high-flying executive at Bloomberg in New York. Francesca runs a luxury travel company. Neither are thought to share their brother’s radical-Left political outlook, or his views on the evils of long-haul flights (Francesca’s Instagram feed suggests she has visited Mexico, Dubai, America, Greece, Italy, Marbella and Morocco this summer alone). However, they remain on friendly terms with him.

The same goes for mum Ava, who is nowadays single and at 71 enjoys a jet-setting lifestyle involving luxury hotels, designer clothes and pop concerts, judging by her social media feeds, which boast holidays this year to Gibraltar, Greece, Las Vegas and Thailand.

‘Ava is an extremely glamorous granny who gives every impression of having plenty of cash and liking to spend it,’ is how an acquaintance in North Manchester puts it. ‘She certainly doesn’t agree with Zack’s politics. But is extremely proud of everything he’s achieved.’

As a teenager, Polanski developed a passion for acting, appearing as Puck in a school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and playing Buttons in a youth drama company’s Christmas pantomime in Prestbury, Cheshire. After A-levels, he went to study drama at Aberystwyth University.

Around this time, he decided to change his name from David Paulden.

In a recent interview, he told the Big Issue that ‘growing up, my stepdad was called David, and I didn’t like being a little version of my stepdad’.

Speaking to the Left-wing New Statesman magazine he offered a darker version of events, saying ‘there was a person in the family called David who was abusive’, though didn’t clarify who exactly he was referring to and has never publicly suggested his stepfather was to blame.

His ‘new’ name, Zack, came from a character in a favourite novel. Polanski was, he says, the original surname of his grandfather, who’d fled Nazi Germany.

Polanski then enrolled on an acting course in Atlanta, Georgia – and had a political awakening. ‘It wasn’t until I went to America, and saw the inequality, the racism, the homophobia, that I started to wake up,’ he recently said.

On returning to Britain in the mid-2000s, he moved to London and attempted to earn a living as a jobbing actor, supplementing meagre earnings from fringe theatre performances by working in the ‘gig’ economy.

His stint on Harley Street, at the Lewis Clinic, which called itself London’s ‘leading home of Cognitive Hypnotherapy and Transformative Coaching’, came in the early 2010s. Not all of his work there involved attempting to hypnotise female clients into having larger breasts. Sometimes it revolved around a form of counselling.

Online CVs from this time saw him describe himself as everything from a ‘life coach’ to an ‘actor, political activist and corporate trainer’.

Party politics didn’t come calling until 2015, when he decided to join the Liberal Democrats at the relatively ripe age of 33. That summer, he delivered a speech at their party conference, before inviting a gospel choir on to the stage.

In 2016, he stood unsuccessfully for the Lib Dems in a City Hall election, where his profession was described in campaign literature as ‘youth counsellor’ and (perhaps ironically, given the source of his family’s wealth) he trumpeted his status as a champion of ‘generation rent’ who are exploited by private landlords.

Polanski’s membership of the party ended abruptly late that year, however, when he failed in a bid to become the Lib Dems’ parliamentary candidate at a by-election in Richmond Park. He resigned in a huff, complaining that the party ‘was not interested in the diversity and experience I would bring as a gay Jewish renter’.

Despite being viewed as a Right-leaning Liberal Democrat, he promptly lurched Leftwards by joining the Greens in 2018.

Three years later, he finally got a salaried political job, clinching a spot on the London Assembly. The role brings him £66,000 a year, though that hasn’t yet allowed him to get on to the capital’s housing ladder. According to recent reports, he and Bryan have spent at least part of the year living as ‘property guardians’ in Hackney (meaning they live in a vacant building to provide security for the owner in exchange for cheaper rent). According to the Register of Interests, he also owns a ‘mooring’ in London.

Since achieving elected office, Polanski has become a vocal advocate for an array of fashionable issues, from transgender rights to rejoining the EU (he says Brexit has ‘been a disaster for the climate crisis’) and quitting Nato.

A gift of the gab, perhaps derived from his background in the performing arts, makes him an eloquent presence in TV studios.

Perhaps his most divisive campaigning, of late, has involved the Middle East.

Despite being raised in what he has described as ‘a very Zionist household’, Polanski is an outspoken critic of Israel. He once said that the Board of Deputies of British Jews ought to be renamed the ‘Board of Deputies for the Israeli Government’. And earlier this summer, he wore a T-shirt proclaiming ‘We are all Palestine Action’ at Glastonbury, days before that revolting outfit was due to be proscribed as a terrorist group.

Such stunts speak to a broader theme: his vision, as leader, has been to move the party away from purely environmental issues to become a go-to haven for radical voters convinced that Labour’s problem – under self-professed socialist Keir Starmer – is that it is not Left-wing enough.

Thus far, Polanski’s strategy appears to be working. A mooted alliance with Jeremy Corbyn’s ultra-Left group of pro-Gaza rebel MPs could turn them into an even more significant force.

But with success will surely come proper scrutiny. Not to mention awkward questions about whether ‘eco populist’ Zack Polanski’s much-trumpeted socialism is actually of the champagne variety.