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In his two months as leader, Zack Polanski has made it clear that Wales is a key part of his masterplan for the future of the Green Party. He used part of his own leadership victory speech to say his top priority was to get the party leader in Wales - Anthony Slaughter - elected to the Senedd in the election in May 2026, and he was here within days of his election. Within weeks, he's come back again to appear at the Welsh party's conference. And there was plenty to celebrate - the party has, it says, almost tripled its membership in two months and the polls show they will get their first Senedd member in May 2026. Such is the new electoral system that there is also talk they could take a second, or even a third too. At the conference, in Cardiff this weekend, the party announced two high-profile defections - as two former Labour councillors both joined the party. One of whom was Sean Morgan, who quit Labour during the Caerphilly by-election when he was authority leader there with a livid row at Labour's approach to candidate selection for May 2026 about the general handling of its members' concerns. Speaking to WalesOnline ahead of his speech, the party leader said it felt like an "exciting" time. In the recent Caerphilly Senedd by-election, the Green Party took just 1.5% of the vote, but that's not where people should be looking, he said, because the campaign for May will be different. He says instead that people should look to the by-election win in the Cardiff council ward of Grangetown. "Caerphilly was typical Plaid territory. The kind of campaign that we're going to be running at the Senedd elections next May is incomparable to the campaign we ran in Caerphilly. I think a comparator is Cardiff in Grangetown where Plaid and all the commentators expected them to win, but it actually went to the Green Party," he said. Their candidate at that election won 1% more of the vote than the Labour candidate, in an area known for supporting the party. There has been a noticeable change towards the Green Party, and asked why he thinks that is, he said a whole host of things have come together. The Senedd election will be a new electoral system, a form of proportional representation rather than a first-past-the-post system and people are turning away from Labour too. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here . "I think they all come together to make this moment really, really powerful where people are calling for change and they want change," he says. "The moment for grassroots community organising to tackle the deep inequalities that exist right across Wales, with a party that cares about bringing in rent controls, about nationalising the water companies and investing in our public services, and really it feels like the Green Party has the answer to all of those." There has been chatter for some time that the party could take a seat in the Caerdydd Penarth seat - a constituency which encompasses part of that council ward where they had success, along with Penarth. That's now backed up by polling. Now though, as optimism grows, they are not only talking about one seat there, but two, and in other places across Wales. "The old way of doing politics is to constantly expectation manage. So I also want to be clear that winning one Senedd member when we haven't had Greens there in the past will be a huge, impactful change," he says. "The power of having just one person in the room who is able to hold the powerful to account, to demand justice for people in Wales and for the Welsh people and to put an alternative argument to the neo liberal kind of one party politics we've had in Wales for far too long will be a dramatic change in and of itself. "And you're absolutely right, I won't be satisfied with just one Senedd member at this point. "We know in the last couple of months, Green Party membership has rocketed. The polls are really telling the story as well and Greens being able to hold the balance of power is a very realistic possibility. "We're not complacent at all. This will be up to Welsh people to decide who they want but what I would say is that if people want change and they want hope, it's very much on the ballot paper in May and its name is Green". Asked where they will come from, he said: "The interesting thing at the moment is that Green support is quite well spread. "We're still making those decisions at the moment," but he said the two target seats right now are both in Caerdydd Penarth . "Everything that's changing and happening seems to be going in the Green Party's favour." Asked which policy people are most interested in, he answered: "I think people have really undoubtedly resonated with our position on Palestine, that we were the first party to call that genocide, and that we've been so morally consistent on that. "Of course, the vast majority of people though care most of all about their bills and the inequality and getting through life. They're absolutely tired and exhausted. "We were always told that we'd be working less hours and earning more money but actually the complete opposite has happened. And particularly because of things like the industrialisation across Wales, people are worried about their jobs and the future of the economy in Wales, and their local area. "So many of the answers around tackling the climate crisis are the same answer to tackling the cost of living crisis. "So if we insulate every single home in Wales that needs it, for instance, that would both make homes cooler in the summer, warmer in the winter and would reduce carbon emissions and crucially, it'll create lots of jobs and reduce people's bills. "So I think what people are hearing for the first time is how we're interlinking people's everyday concerns around inequality and rising bills, and we're still talking about protecting nature and tackling the climate crisis." He said their policy to insulate every home that needs it across England and Wales would not only save money, but cut peoples bills. "It's about making sure that we're investing in building homes properly in the first place. So they don't need to be retrofitted or changed in just a couple of years time, but also making sure that the homes that are so desperately needing this because of rising bills, making sure that they have measures in place. "It's very often like you're punishing people who are already living in poverty, twice, both living in the cold home but also having to pay the larger bill, that's completely unacceptable. "We also know that renters, for instance, is another example, where some of the poorest people in Wales already don't own their own home, so they haven't got that asset and they can be screwed over by unscrupulous landlords. "It's absolutely time to bring in rent controls," he said. Asked how those policies would be funded, he said: "Right now the Westminster government pays for all of this by subsidising the fossil fuel companies and allowing them to continue to to burn more oil and gas and charge us extra for that privilege on our bills. "One is a much wider narrative that we have in Wales right now, which is around Wales having its own powers or more powers to be able to raise its own revenue and its own taxation powers, but also for it to not have to go for a begging bowl from a Westminster government that has demonstrated time and time again that it holds Wales and the people of Wales in contempt. "It's about recognising Wales is its own country, and should have the ability to be able to decide its own ways that it spends money." The London Assembly member said he also wants a wealth tax. "We know the Westminster government has repeatedly ruled out a wealth tax. They say they want to make tricky decisions but they're always tricky decisions on working class communities or migrants or disabled people, never a tricky decision for multi-millionaires and billionaires and it's time that we made those tricky decisions," he said. He said it would not necessarily be a tax on the highest earners, of which Wales has comparatively few when looking at England. "There are people who will make more money in their sleep tonight than people in Wales can earn in an entire year and that inequality is at the root of so many of the problems that are happening in Wales, recognising that for decades now in Wales, poor people have got poorer, rich people have got richer. "This is about tackling the inequality gap and making sure that Wales is an affordable country that everyone can afford to live in," he said. He disputed a vote for the Green Party is a step into the unknown for Welsh voters. "I wouldn't say it's in the unknown. We've got councillors across England and Wales who have been working away for years. We've had an MP for 14 years, and we just quadrupled the number of them. There's a clearly a track record of success, as well as just over the border in Scotland a record of Greens having been in government and having secured things around housing particularly, but also action on the climate crisis. "More widely, to your question, I would say, people need a big change. "It is totally unacceptable. And if people want to preserve the status quo, what is the status quo? The status quo is where Wales has been neglected for decades, is massively struggling, and public services are absolutely at breaking point. "Then we've got a government who bring in things like HS2 that won't benefit Wales, will destroy nature and also there is no economic benefit because of the Barnett formula. "I think people in Wales are saying we want a huge transformational change and what we don't want is the changes that the Labour government brought about, which is why they said they'd have change and it's been changed for the worse and made things even worse for Wales. "People want transformational change that's actually going to put people in front of the heart and the political agenda," he said.
