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Zack Polanski has said a vote for him in the upcoming Holborn and St Pancras byelection is a vote against the government’s reported plans to greenlight a North Sea gasfield.
The leader of the Green party in England and Wales, who was selected on Friday to contest the London seat, also said he was considering building a personal stockpile for the extreme weather predicted with the arrival of the biggest El Niño in 1,000 years, a meteorological phenomenon that supercharges floods and droughts.
Speaking after his candidacy was announced to a room of cheering party members, Polanski said: “The climate crisis is very much on the ballot in this election. We know that in this constituency, people care even more about the climate crisis than the national average.”
He said he was “already talking about” the proposed Jackdaw gasfield on the doorstep in the constituency. It is widely expected that the prime minister, Andy Burnham, will allow the field to be drilled, despite recommendations from climate experts not to allow new drilling in the North Sea.
“People are incensed at the idea that they’ve got this new prime minister who is going to continue to drill for new oil and gas,” Polanski said. “It’s a very, very strong way for anyone who cares about the climate crisis and wants to see better action and more effective action from the government to vote Green.”
Some in Labour are understood to be concerned about the impact of upcoming oil and gas announcements on the campaign. Industry insiders expect the government to greenlight the Jackdaw gasfield but there are expectations that any announcement on Rosebank, a contentious oilfield, will be delayed until after the byelection.
The seat, which will be decided on 8 October, became vacant this month when the former prime minister Keir Starmer announced he was leaving parliament.
The UN has said the El Niño climate phenomenon is “supersizing before our eyes”, exacerbating extreme weather events worldwide. The environment secretary, Angela Eagle, recently suggested Britons should stock up on food and water in preparation for possible outages.
“I’m massively concerned about it,” Polanski told the Guardian. “What I would say is, if anyone does stockpile extra food or water or whatever it might be, then the worst that can happen is you don’t use it.” He said he “hasn’t yet” stockpiled but added: “I might do.”
Polanski has said the Greens, which made gains in the area in the local elections in May, are underdogs in the race but he is confident they can beat Labour, which won the seat with a majority of more than 11,000 at the 2024 general election.
He also said that crimes such as phone-snatching were too prevalent in the constituency, and that arrests for the crime should be made. “Where people are phone snatching, of course they should be arrested for that. But what I want to see more of is less phone snatching rather than dealing with the consequences afterwards.”
On Wednesday, Labour selected the Camden council leader, Sagal Abdi-Wali, as its candidate. She said: “This place welcomed my family as refugees and gave us hope when we needed it most. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to build a life here, serving our community as a councillor, school governor and community activist.”
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Polanski won the race to stand for the Greens over one of the party’s local councillors, Hamza Chowdhury, who had said the constituency did not need “another MP who arrives during an election campaign” and “disappears once the votes are counted”.
At a meeting to announce his candidacy, Polanski said: “The Greens might be the underdog in this election, but we have the momentum, and we can win. And it’s clear everyone knows it’s the Green party against Labour. And before May we had one councillor here, and now we have 10. And last weekend we had so many people on the streets that we delivered leaflets to the entire constituency in just a few hours.”
But he added: ‘I obviously want to win. We’re going to be throwing everything at this election, not just the kitchen sink, but the entire kitchen. I think we can win it.” He said he would not step down if he lost, saying that coming a close second would “send a message”.
Polanski said he had lived in the constituency when he moved to London 20 years ago and that his barber was still there. He also said that if he won, he would contest the seat at the next general election rather than running in a safer one.
