Party leader Zack Polanski says surge in numbers ‘proves that the future of progressive politics belongs to the Greens’

The Green party said its membership had passed 200,000 this weekend in the wake of its victory in the Gorton and Denton byelection, in which it overturned a huge Labour majority.

The party’s membership has tripled since September last year, when it was about 68,000, after the announcement of Zack Polanski as its leader.