I want to hold balance of power at next general election, says Zack Polanski

Zack Polanski has told the BBC he has considered the possibility he could become prime minister - after being asked about it so many times in media interviews.

The Green Party Leader also said his previously stated target of 30 to 40 Green MPs now felt "under ambitious".

In an interview with Nick Robinson for the BBC's Political Thinking podcast, Polanski said he wanted to be in a position where his party could "potentially hold the balance of power" in a hung parliament.

He said he hoped to attract more people like himself, who were "intrinsically political" but turned off by the idea of "party politics", so they could find their voice through his leadership.

Asked whether he could see himself as prime minister, Polanski - who is also a London Assembly member - initially dismissed the idea outright, saying "that really isn't the target right now", before adding that he was asked about it a lot.

He said: "It's definitely on my mind because I get asked about it all the time, but my burning ambition really is to have a wealth tax, action on climate change, and proportional representation."

Pressed further, he said whilst it was tempting to be drawn into thinking about occupying No 10, he was focusing on the next step, which was "to win a lot more MPs and potentially hold the balance of power in a hung parliament after the next general election.

"Then I think that's really interesting, because then you're having conversations about proportional representation, a wealth tax, climate action, and various other policies to reduce the cost of living and make life better for everyone in the country."

Last week Polanski gave a speech setting out his economic vision, calling for a shake-up of what he called the UK's "failing fiscal rules" by installing a new panel of experts tasked with judging the sustainability of the UK's debt, in order to escape the "bond market doom loop".

The "hoarding of wealth" lead to a lack of cash for public services and also meant "we don't have money flowing around our economy", he said in the speech.

Therefore the gap between "the very, very rich and the poor is getting wider and wider", he added.

"I believe almost any problem we could talk about could comes back to inequality", he also said.

In the speech, Polanski also called for billions of pounds to be set aside to support households if energy bills rise in the wake of the Iran war, on top of existing policies including rent controls and nationalising water companies.

Questioned on the podcast as to whether this would include printing more money and more borrowing, Polanski said there would be "deep consideration" of the costs and benefits of a Green investment budget.

"Liz Truss was doing the exact opposite," he said. "She was borrowing for unfunded tax cuts, but I'm talking about borrowing to invest in infrastructure capital spending and day-to-day spending.

"It's very different, it's the opposite image... I'm talking about borrowing to fund transport, education, health because actually if you don't invest in these things it costs so much more because it's a nonsense economy."

Polanski said some of the current problems with bond markets were arising because plans were only provided for the next six months, which is "far too short", and a Green government would instead communicate plans over decades.

"Bond markets aren't ideological," he said. "They just want to know that there's a plan, there's stability and certainty.

"What we saw over five Tory prime ministers and now Keir Starmer is there's a lack of a plan, it kind of veers all over the place."

Polanski is open about coming to politics later in life and having been a Liberal Democrat before he joined the Greens - where he said he backed austerity due to a commonly-held misunderstanding that a national budget is just like a household budget. He now believes that is "nonsense".

Before he started his political career, he said he would have been "dismissive" of party politics but now says helping people to find their political voice is "the number one thing" for him.

"There are lots of people who wouldn't dream of listening to political conversations but are also inherently political and I think we need to reach out to them," he added.

Polanski faces barbs about a 2013 Sun newspaper article where he teamed up with a journalist in a hypnotherapy session to enlarge her bust, which he has apologised for and claimed he was misrepresented.

Since becoming leader, he told Good Morning Britain he did not believe hypnotherapy could make breasts larger and had apologised a day later, a claim that appeared to conflict with a BBC Radio Humberside interview six days later.

Asked again about the incident, he said: "Yes, it does make me cringe. It's embarrassing. I've apologised and I've repeatedly apologised."

Pushing back, Polanski said: "This came out again last week on the same day the Peter Mandelson files were released, the same week there was a war in Iran."

Pointing to the issue of former Welsh Reform leader Nathan Gill being jailed for accepting Kremlin bribes, he added: "It's not about whataboutery, I think it's about proportionality."