Zack Polanski on the BBC's Laura Kuensberg show

Zack Polanski was the first person to announce his candidacy for the Green Party leadership election.

He had a good launch. Coming out the gates first, he got all the attention and made sure that he emerged as the frontrunner.

Alongside this, he had an unprecedented amount of media attention for a Green Party leadership contender. He had an exclusive launch in the Guardian – increasingly the default for a serious contender for the party leadership. What was significant was what came after.

Since his launch, Polanski has had interviews with, among others, the New Statesman and Byline Times. That’s alongside a flurry of interviews on the left wing podcast and YouTube ecosystem an a later series of appearances on mainstream broadcasters including on the BBC and ITV. 

As a result, we’ve been able to glean a lot about his campaign and what it  is prioritising – outside of what he published on his website, what is in his launch video an what he’s been communicating on social media. Here are the top four things we’ve learnt.

There’s energy behind his campaign

The fact that Polanski has attracted this level of media interest indicates one thing – there’s energy and intrigue behind his campaign. In previous leadership elections, candidates haven’t generated this level of coverage and conversation off the bat. They certainly haven’t generated this level of discussion in left wing online media.

The extent to which this translates into votes is unclear. How many party members engage with the outlets he’s had most of his early coverage in? It’s fair to assume that a decent number of the party’s younger, city-based members do. Beyond that? Possibly not.

But can it mobilise new members to join the party to vote for him? There’s certainly a big audience on these platforms who won’t be party members. But this is much more uncharted territory. Based on past leadership elections, there’s no evidence to suggest one way or the other whether an inspiring candidate can drive significant membership growth.

Perhaps Polanski is the candidate who can do it.

He’s set clear dividing lines between himself and the previous leadership

In the various media appearances Polanski has made, he’s made clear that he’s trying to pitch a different form of leadership to those who’ve came before him and, by extension, the only other ticket that’s so far announced for the election.

Ellie Chowns and Adrian Ramsay have pitched themselves as being the best candidates for the leadership position because of their current roles as two of the party’s four MPs. They’ve also emphasised ‘professionalism’ as part of their offer.

By contrast, Polanski has made clear that he has a very different set of ideas. In his media appearances, he’s made clear that he’s very much not interested in following that line.

In his Guardian interview, Polanski said: “There’s an empty space in politics, where we’re not being as bold as we can be. Being sensible and professional are good qualities. But I don’t think they should be the central qualities.”

That’s a clear critique of the current leaders. Whatever you think of it, Polanski is clearly seeking to position himself as being less cautious in his rhetoric and messaging than Denyer and Ramsay have been.

He’s wants to welcome in the Labour left

One of the more striking elements of Polanski’s interviews have been his comments around how the party should relate to left wingers outside of the Greens. In various interviews, he went so far as to argue that the Greens should ‘roll out the red carpet’ to left wing MPs – either Labour or independent.

That’s more than being open to discussions. It’s an active invitation. And it’s well beyond anything any party leader has previously said.

On the one hand, none of this matters much. What the Green Party leader says about this publicly is pretty much irrelevant. If a significant figure from the left of the Labour Party – whether an MP or otherwise – was genuinely interested in the joining the Greens, the degree to which the party leader had encouraged it publicly is by the by.

Instead, the relevance of this is that Polanski is doing clear signalling. By indicating he’s keen on Labour left MPs defecting to the Greens, he’s not really talking about or to those MPs. He’s talking to the people who were excited by the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn and signalling that the Greens could be their home. Whether or not that’s sufficient to entice people to join the Greens remains to be seen.

He’s willing to take risks

One thing that you could say about the above is that it’s a risk. That’s in contrast to most of his communications so far since he launched his candidacy.

For the most part, while Polanski’s messaging  has been left-coded it has been largely unobjectionable to the vast majority of the party membership.

Active encouragement of Labour left figures joining the party, however, is an example of Polanski being willing to take some risks that might alienate some sections of the membership.

Elsewhere, in an interview with Byline Times, Polanski said he thinks that the UK should be leaving NATO. Three years ago this wouldn’t have been a big deal. But with recent significant shifts in the party’s policy on NATO, it now very much is.

In truth, it’s unlikely that there are a substantial number of Green Party members who will see this particular deviation from policy as a deal-breaker. However, if Polanski decides to take risks in other areas of policy, the number of members that could be alienate significantly increases.

Ultimately, with risks like this what we’re looking at is political calculation. Are there positions which Polanski can promote which alienate fewer people than they mobilise? As the campaign continues, we’ll see whether Polanski takes these risks and whether they pay off.