DAN HODGES: History will record Zack Polanski as a coward and charlatan who led his once-decent party into political oblivion

It may take a few months. Possibly a year or so. But some time very, very soon Zack Polanski, current leader of the Green Party, will find himself consigned to the history books.

He will not merit his own chapter. Or even his own page. But he will merit a footnote.

And it will recall the following: That he was a coward, a charlatan, an egotist and a poseur, who led his party into political oblivion. Actually, he didn’t lead them at all. He sat back, supine, while a group of naive – but well-intentioned – environmentalists were devoured by a hard-Left monster of his own creation.

The Green Party of the United Kingdom has a long, guileless, but broadly honourable tradition. In the 2010 election they won their first parliamentary seat when Caroline Lucas triumphed in Brighton Pavilion. They once even secured the vote of a young commodities trader called Nigel Farage.

And two days ago, they burnt everything down. With the world watching their conference for the first time in decades, Green delegates opted not to present the face of modern progressive environmentalism but instead embrace the face of scowling anti-Semitism.

A motion stating it was racist to support the existence of the state of Israel was passed with cheers.

Some time very, very soon Zack Polanski, current leader of the Green Party, will find himself consigned to the history books

A second motion, aimed at protecting Jewish members who attended synagogues, was defeated by 1,026 votes to 684. As the ballots were cast it emerged that the conference organisers had been forced to arrange a ‘safe room’ for Jewish delegates.

And while all this was occurring, this political pogrom against those whose only crime is wanting a single sanctuary for global Jewry, where was the Green party’s leader? He wasn’t even in Brighton. He ran away.

As his MPs and senior leadership were fighting, and failing, to turn back the anti-Semitic tide, Polanski was in Camden. We know this, because he posted a tweet.

As those who opposed Jews attending their place of worship without persecution were storming over the barricades, he tweeted ‘Amazing to be out on the doorsteps of Holborn & St Pancras for our final Sunday! Speaking to voters today about rent controls, Thames water nationalisation and keeping oil & gas in the ground. Just 4 days until people vote on Thursday!’

He was referencing the by-election in Keir Starmer’s former constituency. Which, thanks to Polanski’s spinelessness, is no longer a mere parliamentary contest but has become a referendum of whether Jews have a right to exist free from oppression in the United Kingdom.

No one has been more critical than me of Starmer, and his benighted premiership. But in this he deserves credit.

He was effective in driving out the anti-Semitic flotsam and jetsam that was choking Labour. And now we can all see where it has washed up.

Zack Polanski had a choice. He could have defended his own party, stayed true to its principled stance on progressive environmentalism, and told the hard-Left carpetbaggers to take a hike.

But he didn’t. His ego, his vanity and his lust for attention and power blinded him to the threat bearing down on his party. Like the ancient Trojans, he threw open his gates to the Corbynite horse. And has been consumed as its ideological warriors pour forth from its base.

Polanski likes to frame himself as an edgy revolutionary. He isn’t. He’s a child. A political dilettante, who as a passionate Liberal Democrat once heckled Jeremy Corbyn for his ‘passivity and ambivalence for Europe’.

I met him once, in the hours after the Gorton and Denton by-election, in which the Green Party’s candidate, plumber Hannah Spencer, won a majority of 4,400. I attempted to politely proffer my congratulations on his party’s stunning victory. He jumped away like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an approaching SUV.

Green delegates opted not to present the face of modern progressive environmentalism but instead embrace the face of scowling anti-Semitism

When he was growing up, I suspect the Greens’ absent leader had a poster of Che Guevara on his wall. But the famed Marxist at least was prepared to fatefully go toe to toe with his pursuers on that dusty Bolivian hillside. Zack Polanski wasn’t even prepared take a stand in Brighton Lanes at the weekend.

And this is the price his party will now pay. In April, the Greens stood at 16 per cent in the polls, just two points behind the Tories. Today they are languishing at 10 per cent, level with the Liberal Democrats. The Great Green Hope has shown himself to be no more effective at capturing the public imagination than Ed Davey on his paddle-board.

Which would be funny, if it wasn’t so dangerous. Under Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour the party became so infested by anti-Semitism that the Equality and Human Rights Commission was forced to open an investigation.

But even Corbyn did not seek to sanction those who engaged in a simple act of religious worship.

In the wake of the Green’s ‘Zionism is racism’ vote, the party’s deputy chair Rachel Millward was left to pick up the Kristallnacht glass. ‘Anti-Semitism has no place in this party,’ she proclaimed. But now it officially does.

To adopt the phrase beloved by extremist pro-Palestinian campaigners, Britain’s Greens have now ‘internationalised the intifada’. They have adopted the stance previously only taken by terror groups such as Hamas, and formally embraced calls for the eradication of Israel.

Yesterday, it was reported that more than a dozen Labour MPs, led by former Home Office minister Mike Tapp, urged Sussex Police to investigate whether events at the Green conference crossed into criminally actionable racial or religious hatred against Jewish people.

In fact, when it comes to anti-Semitism, the British Greens have become international trailblazers. Ciaran Cuffe, Chair of the umbrella European Green Party, said the group were seeking urgent talks with their sister party because ‘the motion directly contradicts agreed pan-European Green stances regarding the self-determination of Israelis and Jewish people’.

Amnesty International UK chair Sandy Ruthven announced he was resigning from the Green Party as a result of its new stance.

But Zack Polanski said nothing. Actually that’s wrong. As his party was disintegrating around him, he tweeted ‘Wonderful to visit New Horizon Youth Centre this morning in Holborn & St Pancras. They’re doing incredible work in such a difficult background of youth homelessness’.

Polanski is not a racist. Nor is he an anti-Semite. He is, in fact, the only Jewish leader of a major UK political party.

But he is also utterly impotent, ineffectual, helpless and hapless. He thought he could manage and manipulate the hard-Left Marxist interlopers.

And like so many progressive dreamers before him, his visions of a new Jerusalem have crumbled to neo-Stalinist dust.

And now he is finished. On Thursday the voters of Holborn and St Pancras will do what Londoners have always done when faced with the march of the anti-Semitic jackboot.

They will send Polanski’s Greenshirts packing. The Greens’ collapse in the polls will accelerate. And a vicious bout of infighting, backstabbing and recriminations will commence.

Hopefully, from amid the carnage, the old, principled environmentalists will be able to reclaim control. But they will have to do so without Polanski. He has unwittingly delivered his party into the hands of voracious, anti-Semitic zealots. The Green leader has been devoured by a hard-Left monster of his own creation. Deservedly.