Zack Polanski has been leader of the Green Party for just seven months. And he's already been found out.

On yesterday's media round, his mealy-mouthed attempt to minimise the new anti-Jewish terror sweeping Britain was finally exposed.

Asked by Trevor Phillips to justify his comment that 'there's a conversation to be had about whether it's a perception of unsafety or whether it's actual unsafety', he dodged, obfuscated and eventually floundered.

If people were stabbed, that was terrible, he agreed. But that was somehow unconnected from the marches in which people have openly carried posters demanding a 'Global Intifada', and Israel's extermination 'from the river to the sea'.

He experienced a similar car crash moment over his retweet of criticism of the police officers who had bravely confronted and disarmed the Golders Green attacker. It was the wrong 'forum' to express those concerns he initially admitted, before then expressing his 'shock' at the footage, and finally claiming even the Met Police Commissioner had confirmed 'an unusual use of police force' had been employed.

When Polanski was elected to leadership of the Greens – to great fanfare – he was heralded by his supporters on the Left as a new, vibrant, insurgent political force. But as the events of the past week have shown, he isn't. He's just Jeremy Corbyn in a slightly sharper suit.

Watching him yesterday, I was struck with how his attempts to deflect criticism of his stance on anti-Semitism mimicked those of the former Labour leader. Corbyn and his supporters would angrily insist it was impossible for him to turn a blind eye to the persecution of Jews because he was a life-long warrior against racism.

Polanski and his acolytes make a similar claim, insisting the Green's leader's own Jewish heritage means he cannot be accused of green-lighting anti-Semitism.

It's classic biography politics: 'Look retrospectively at my CV, not what I actually do, or say, or what stances I adopt, or what company I keep.'

Since their dramatic triumph in the Gorton and Denton by-election, there has been a huge deconstruction of the Green surge. Their bold and radical policy programme. Their shift away from 'fluffy environmentalism'. Their impressive and organic grass-roots mobilisation.

But this analysis has overlooked an important fact. There is no 'Green' surge.

T he party that existed prior to Polanski's election no longer exists. Its brand has literally been appropriated by the Corbynites. Their agenda. Their organisational infrastructure. Their personnel. All of it has transferred en masse to their new home.

Some may call this a classic hard-Left infiltration. But the Marxist playbook requires the takeover to be covert. The Corbynite annexation of the Greens has happened in plain sight.

Indeed, it's an important part of their strategy. Polanski recognised that his old faction had become stuck in an electoral cul-de-sac. Attractive only to that tiny section of the electorate for whom protecting the melting ice-caps and vanishing rainforests was a crusade, rather than an abstract concern.

So he has relaunched, presenting himself not simply as a dynamic alternative to Keir Starmer and his hollowed-out, soulless Labour Party, but its replacement. And what's more, it's a strategy that's working spectacularly.

Last week I was speaking to a senior Cabinet minister about Thursday's local elections. They weren't primarily concerned about the threat from Reform, which had long been priced in. What was giving him nightmares was Labour's collapsing Left flank.

'People think the Greens are just going to take votes from us in middle-class liberal areas. But the reality is they're going to take votes from us everywhere,' he revealed.

'That's what we saw in Gorton and Denton.

'Working-class voters who wouldn't touch Farage with a bargepole are turning to Polanski. They think he's the real Labour Party now. And we're just a bunch of soft Tory sellouts.'

In the 2019 General Election, Boris Johnson triumphed because Corbyn's unreconstructed socialism, perceived lack of patriotism and agency to anti-Semitism became so obvious to the British people that the majority felt they had no option but to reject him.

But Corbyn still managed to secure more than ten million votes – more than 30 per cent of the total votes cast.

These are the votes that are about to be hoovered up by Polanski. Left-leaning electors can see exactly what he is now. But they don't care, because for them the choice is a simple one: Polanski with all his faults, or Keir Starmer with his. And to them, it's a no-brainer.

This week, Labour will throw the kitchen sink at Polanski and the Greens. The anti-Semitism. The neo-Marxism. The extremism.

And it will have zero effect. Because Starmer is Polanski's human shield.

The anger, disillusionment and contempt for Sir Keir has now reached such a level that whoever defines himself against the Prime Minister is guaranteed success on Thursday.

Zack Polanski has been found out. But fortunately for him, so has Keir Starmer.