The Green Party leader came out of nowhere. Nobody paid much attention to the Greens until the charismatic Polanski swept to the leadership with 84% of the vote in September 2025. Suddenly, it felt like the whole country was watching. Now his swift rise and accelerating fall offers a stark warning to new Labour leader Andy Burnham.

The Greens went bananas for their charismatic new leader. Membership more than tripled, from 68,000 to 230,000. A similar thing happened when charismatic Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader. The grizzled leftie veteran also inspired a huge membership surge. Many will be the same people, political dreamers searching for the next Messiah. The left always seems to need one.

Keffiah-sporting Gaza obsessives and entryist Islamists went bananas too. Finally, so did Zack Polanski. Possibly he always was. His critics would say so. They’ve repeatedly mocked him as the “breast whisperer”, after claiming he could make women’s breasts grow in just a few affordable hypnotherapy sessions. There’ll always be a market for that. Just as there’ll always be a market for a left-wing rabble-rouser.

The liberal establishment is prone to short-lived infatuations. Remember how it swooned over charismatic TV personality Russell Brand when he reinvented himself as a left-wing demagogue and denounced profit as a “filthy word”. Brand had a thing about breasts too, although in a different way to the openly gay Polanski. It didn’t end well for Brand. The Corbyn cult peaked nine years ago at Glastonbury. Now Polanski is losing his shine too.

Polanski lives his life on social media. He’s been described as “terminally online”, and while social media has built him up, it’s now knocking him down. His bubble was first punctured when he criticised unarmed police officers who put their lives on the line during the Golders Green terror attack in April.

Now he’s in disgrace again, after sharing a picture of a man wearing a black T-shirt reading “We’re only making plans for Nigel” alongside a guillotine. Celebrating violence against right-wing politicians is a sport on the left, as we saw with the gleeful response to the brutal murder of Ann Widdecombe. Reform UK accused Polanski of inciting violence against Nigel Farage. Polanski deleted the post but didn’t apologise. Instead, he’s doubled down, by liking online posts suggesting his right-wing rivals support Adolf Hitler.

Polanski has an even bigger problem. The left has a brand new Messiah, in charismatic Andy Burnham. The two men have one thing in common. Polanski secured the Green leadership with the votes of just 20,411 party members. Burnham won the Makerfield by-election with 24,000. So now the left has two Messiahs, with a combined mandate of less than 45,000. At the last election, 21million voted.

Burnham is a far more experienced politician than Polanski, and canny enough to avoid many of the traps his rival has blundered into. His ratings have soared and it’s easy to see why but popularity can be fleeting. Keir Starmer discovered that. Zack Polanski is finding it now.

Burnham should learn from Polanski’s rise and fall. The Labour leader is on the up today but give it time. They all come crashing down in the end.