NORTH Herefordshire MP and Ellie Chowns is the bookies’ favourite to take over as leader of Green Party, with current leader Zack Polanski seen as continuing to flounder over the party’s anti-Zionism controversy.

Former MEP Dr Chowns’ constituency borders on Ross on-Wye, and includes Brampton Abbots, Hoarwithy and King’s Caple.

Mr Polanski opted not to vote on a controversial motion at his party’s conference in Brighton earlier this month, which set as party policy the position that Zionism, the belief in Israel as a homeland for Jews, was “racist”.

Shortly after, he failed to take the Holborn & St Pancras by-election vote from Labour, which would have enabled him to take up a seat in the Commons.

The Zionism issue resurfaced this weekend when Mr Polanski confirmed on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg he would not try to overturn the controversial motion.

And while he would look at amend it to remove its mention of a single-state solution for Palestine, under party rules this would not be until 2028, he said.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism has meanwhile referred the Green Party to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, calling its motion ‘brazenly discriminatory’.

Mr Polanski has also come under fire from within his own party over the issue, with Malvern-born former leader Caroline Lucas saying Mr Polanski had been wrong to miss the vote, and warning the party was “woefully exposed” to entryism by radicals with their own agenda.

Similarly, Dr Chowns, the party’s current leader in Westminster who was elected to Parliament in 2024, said she wanted to “make sure that my party isn’t vulnerable to capture by extremists and racists”.

A survey by pollsters Ipsos this month found the share of public with an unfavourable view of Mr Polanski had risen to 52 per cent, while a YouGov poll found 34 per cent of voters now think he should quit.

According to aggregator site oddschecker.com, Bet365 and William Hill are the only two firms to have opened books on the question so far.