In terms of a few other key sort of conservation concerns that are going around the summit today, can I just ask you like where sort of you and the party sort of stand on things like bottom trawling, on grouse shooting, you've already suggested you've got an opinion on that in that sense, in terms of peat restoration and rainforest protection, in terms of the specific conservation objectives for British biodiversity,

Where do you stand? What do you think? Yeah, so if I start with bottom trolling, incredibly destructive and incredibly inhumane.

And I say that as a vegan.

Now, you don't have to be vegan to be in the Green Party.

In fact, I often say to Tandon slightly that if someone wants to eat meat or drive or fly, you can still care about the environment and still care about nature.

I don't think we should allow these barriers to be the access to people caring about things.

But speaking on a personal level, because I have the privilege and the time to be able to do that, I care about what is on my plate and I care about for destruction of animals.

That's impossible, right?

But I wonder whether you think that there are forces there that would actually quite like to roll back some of the equalities legislation that we've seen over the last 20 years.

Yeah, and I think it's equality legislation and the rights we've won are not linear.

They can go back as quickly as they go forward.

I think the first thing to say is solidarity to Wes Streeting, someone who I disagree with on a whole breadth of issues.

I think it's brilliant that we've got to a place where we can have a gay defence secretary.

And it's pretty grim to hear that.

It reflects my own experiences too.

What's surprised you about the 11 months and the experience that you personally have had that you weren't reckoning on at the beginning?

We're gonna give that a go instead"?

Well, the truth is, on the doorstep, what I've heard is the max amount of positivity for the Green Party and for me if I'm the candidate, so, uh, let's park that.

It is also true to hear, I've had the odd conversation, including one just before I spoke to you, where someone said, "You know what? I'm, I'm not sure about Andy Burnham, but I think we need to give him a chance." It's a really argument, uh, easy argument for me to answer.

After this election, Andy Burnham will still be prime minister.

We will still have a Labour government.

So in Holborn & St Pancras, people have a choice between the Labour Party and the Green Party, and if they get a Labour MP, he will probably be a backbencher who will nod along to the things that Andy Burnham does.

Holborn & St Pancras doesn't really get any value added from that.

why is this such an important by-election for people to give up their time, maybe it's the first time, and knock on doors?

He is gay, and he was bullied for it.

Yeah, so I was attacked on Canal Street, I think, when I was about, um, 15, 16.

It's hard because you're only ever the person you are with the experiences you are.

So I'd like to think even if I hadn't been attacked, I would still be someone who cared about injustice or cared about-

And whatever the merits of his policies, he's drawn attention to problems that for many, many people are desperately real.

Hello.

Hello.

It's lovely to meet you.

He is gay, and he was bullied for it.

Yeah, so I was attacked on Canal Street, I think, when I was about, um, 15, 16.

It's hard because you're only ever the person you are with the experiences you are.

So I'd like to think even if I hadn't been attacked, I would still be someone who cared about injustice or cared about-

He offered something much more powerful, the dream of a magically improved future.

To make hope normal again.

[crowd cheering]

Since he became leader, Green Party membership has surged.

I think for far too long, tackling the climate crisis felt like it was gonna be this big sacrifice or, you know, you would get called the fun police, all these kind of old cliches.

But actually, the key bit is for people that have to change their behavior are the super rich, the multimillionaires and billionaires, the corporations who have been polluting our environment, destroying our democracy, and destroying our communities.

His message is ordinary people don't need to worry about their carbon footprint.

This was a big distraction technique to get us all pointing at each other and our working-class communities to say- Oh, you're not recycling properly, or you need to be vegan.

Now, to be clear, I am vegan, I don't drive, I don't fly.

My green credentials are clean.

But you can do those things and still be an environmentalist and still care about the planet.

The UK Green Party leader, Zach Polanski, has told Bloomberg Radio that laws need to catch up with the reality of climate change.

It's not just infrastructure.

We should have a maximum workplace temperature.

It's outrageous that we have lowest workplace temperature where you can't work in the cold.

But we don't have that for heat.

Businesses, schools, we will have to be flexible.

And this won't always be a popular message.

Like, why did you do that?

Yeah.

Um, the article's nonsense, and I've apologized for it several times, and I stick by that apology.

Yeah.

I wasn't a politician.

I went along with the idea.

I shouldn't have done that, and that's what I've apologized for and stick by that apology.

Is that the core of your beliefs? That basically the capitalist system as we have it now needs to be gone.

I think it's one of the cores.

I think what I would say the core is actually is people power and recognizing people's agency and empowerment, which I've spoken about a few times.

I think an inevitable consequence of that is that we look at a different way of society functioning.

And right now, uh, in fact, I spoke about in that speech when, uh, I was born or in, uh, a little bit after there were 15 billionaires in this country.

There's now 154.

Now, I don't have a problem just with billionaires, but the problem is the hoarding of wealth, and actually that means we don't have money flowing around our economy.

After he died?

if the Greens had a chance, Zach would stand himself, he's a Mancunian, why not?

What I would say to Labour is they should probably stop obsessing about us in this election.

They're talking about us a lot and we know that's because this election is really between the Reform Party and the Green Party.

Labour are on record saying, or Labour advisers are on record saying, that if the Reform Party won that would be bad for them.

But if the Green Party won, that would be existential for them.

And I see that as a little bit of an invitation, to be honest.

We're here right now to demonstrate that people don't need to vote Labour because they're worried about the rise of reform.

I asked Zach about an open letter written to him by Lucy Powell, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, which called on him to stop kidding the electorate by claiming that the Greens had a hope in hell of winning the seat.

What, what do you think that, the reason for that is?

Yeah, I think they're partly confused.

It was interesting on Question Time, Zia Yusuf used the phrase, "You might be surging in the polls, Zac." And I thought, people don't use phrases like that by accident.

That's been playing on his mind that the Greens are surging in the polls.

That's something they've been talking about in their, in their meetings.

It's also interesting, The Spectator, just yesterday alone, I think released three hit pieces on me in one day.

Three pieces in one day.

I mean, when you're looking at the politics in different parts of the world, talking about the US, are you looking at, say, Mamdani in New York, AOC, the way that they approach politics? Is that who you're taking inspiration from?

But you think the Israeli government is a terrorist organization?

Um, I think the Israeli Army certainly, in terms of, uh, should be proscribed in terms of when we look at the behavior and the way they've behaved.

Uh, there's a surgeon, a British surgeon called Nick Maynard, he was in one of the hospitals.

He said that on one day you would see every casualty would come in with an ankle injury.

The next, an abdomen.

The next day, teenage boys would have wounds in their testicles.

The only conclusion you could make is that the Israeli government were using these children as target practice.

It's what they're doing.

We just went to the Wetherspoons and asked people whether they agreed with Nigel Farage that this was like North Korea and they said yes.

I mean, that's pretty grim, and I think that demonstrates what a need there is right now to communicate to the country in the way that Farage has been communicating and cutting through, the real solutions, because actually everything that Farage suggests is gonna make people's lives worse.

I've been saying to people over and over again today, "Do you feel like you live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world?" And people look at me and laugh.

And actually, there is lots of wealth in this country, but we know it's being hoarded by multimillionaires and billionaires and we need a wealth tax.

A wealth tax could help us invest in our communities, protect our National Health Service, build council homes.

These are the things that people want.

They don't wanna see stripping back of workers' rights and people blaming immigration.

Can I ask you what you made of his appearance, uh, in Congress yesterday at the, uh, committee?

If they had any kind of charismatic or populist leadership, we'd be eight to 10 points further down in the polls." Do you agree with that analysis?

Well, I've got things to say about the Labour minister but (laughs) I'll, I'll take the, uh, question on directly.

I think it's really true that the Green Party has not cut through in the way that we should.

We know we have a deeply unequal society where poor people are poorer than they've ever been before.

Since COVID there's more billionaires in this country, and whilst their wealth has doubled, our assets have been stripped away so people are rightly feeling angry.

But I don't think the solutions that Reform offer are gonna deal with any of that anger.

In fact, they will fuel it and they will make it worse.

Five Eyes agreement?