I danced with Zack Polanski at a Green Party rave – here’s what went down

With other political parties seeming to grab mainstream media attention a lot more easily than the Greens, who wouldn’t suggest throwing a DJ event to drum up young voters?

The Cause, an open-air nightclub space in London, hosted the ‘Green
Party PARTY’ on Sunday, with acts from Badger to Toddla T – and guest appearances from none other than Green MP Hannah Spencer and party leader Zack Polanski himself.

The event was put together by Green Space, an organisation that puts ‘community, creativity and joy at the heat of politics’.

It launched in January with a club night in Heaven that raised an impressive £13,000 for the London Green Party.

But as someone who has been to the Cause before, I could tell that this time around the turnout was much smaller than its capacity.

The scene started off generally dead, with the MCs committing the cardinal sin of talking over the music.

One memorable line from them was ‘If you get closer to the speaker, the music gets louder!’ – well, duh.

Some seemed to love the chants – which included the good old ‘oggy, oggy, oggy!’ – but as a regular at DJ events, it seemed a bit on the nose.

With final entry at six, you had plenty of time to wander around the three available spaces (with one extra room for the ‘VIP’) before Zack made his grand entrance at 6.45pm.

As speeches go it was short, keeping to buzz words and reliable Green slogans such as ‘Who is ready for rent control?’ – followed, of course, by a bunch of woo’s.

It wasn’t anything overly inspiring, but it got the crowd pumped up and the atmosphere improved greatly afterwards.

While this may be a smart way to connect with current Green Party voters, I didn’t hear about it until a few days beforehand while searching for something outdoors to fill the sunny weekend.

Perhaps the small turnout was down to the Greens’ apparent lack of media presence (something Polanski has done much to combat), but as a club regular who works for a newspaper, I was shocked I didn’t hear about it in advance.

My boyfriend didn’t even register what the event was. He spent far too long trying to work out who this DJ ‘Zack Polanski’ was until it dawned on him that a Green Party didn’t just mean the environment.

The leader’s second speech was at 8.40pm, letting you enjoy the performers before riling up support again in an inside room.

For this one, Polanski was joined by Hannah Spencer, and while he again mainly stuck to chants to keep the audience engaged, the speech also touched on trans rights, billionaires and taxing the rich.

This final speech was followed by Polanski dancing with his voters to classic tracks such as Avicii’s Levels – he didn’t have a go behind the decks himself, sadly.

It hadn’t dawned on me until then just how surreal this event was.

I was dancing, at a rave, with the leader of a major political party – a hopeful to become Prime Minister. A vision of Keir Starmer in Polanski’s place put me in hysterics.

Then again, you have Lib Dem leader Ed Davey making a fool of himself during the run up to the last election in order to get into the public eye.

Surely throwing a DJ event for funding and ‘community’ highlights a political party’s message more than bungee jumping at a football club?

Keeping the speeches to a few slogans meant the event became more about welcoming people and making sure everyone was included, rather than pushing an agenda.

You might argue that it would be better if they hadn’t spoken, and instead just hosted the event in their name, to show that this is what they stood for without making it overly political.

However, the majority of the crowd were already Green Party voters and seemed to be there for the rare opportunity to party with Polanski.

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