The current and former leaders of the Green party have warned that the party should listen to the concerns of Reform UK voters in order to tackle inequality.

Zack Polanski and Caroline Lucas said on Saturday that the Greens needed to understand why voters affected by the cost of living crisis were attracted to Nigel Farage’s party.

Polanski, who has previously said he would welcome Reform voters to his party, was speaking at a conference organised by the leftwing campaign group, Compass, in east London.

Latest polling shows 27% of the electorate would vote Reform if a general election was held, potentially paving the way for Farage to become the next prime minister.

“I could stand here, and spend the rest of the evening talking about why Reform are bad, and I’d feel great,” said Polanski, who was elected to lead the party last year. “But there’s a really important distinction that needs to be made.

“Nigel Farage, the Reform MPs, the people who speak for them, are very different to people who might be thinking about voting for Reform.

“They are the exact people we need to be caring about. Because when we say people feel left behind, they don’t feel left behind – they have been left behind, by decades of austerity and by successive governments, by politicians who far too often speak to them like they’re stupid – that’s if they’re even speaking to them at all.

“Ultimately we need to reach out with this message of inequality and point out that when multimillionaires and billionaires are taking more money than ever before, the problem is not someone who is fleeing for their lives and might be travelling by small boat. The problem is flying above our head by private jet.”

Lucas, a former MP who led the Green party at various points between 2003 and 2018, was in the audience for Polanski’s speech.

“Listening to [Reform voters] is the starting point, as many of their concerns are perfectly legitimate,” she said afterwards.

“We would disagree on the solutions they are reaching for, but when they have had the cost of living crisis for 20 years, and when they have had endless promises from other national governments that simply don’t deliver, you can’t be surprised that they act with a sense of desperation.

“If someone else is offering something that’s better, there is a sense that it’s worth giving it a try.”

Lucas added she was glad the Green party had not “thrown the kitchen sink” at the Makerfield byelection, where Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is seeking a return to parliament, widely seen as a pitch for the Labour leadership.

Burnham is expected to face a strong challenge from Reform, who won nearly 50% of votes in the constituency’s eight council wards in the May elections.

However, its candidate, Robert Kenyon, has faced widespread criticism for his social media posts. Reform also faces having its vote squeezed by the new hard right party, Restore Britain, led by its former MP Rupert Lowe.

Lucas stopped short of suggesting the Green candidate, Sarah Wakefield, should withdraw to avoid similarly splitting the leftwing vote.

However, she said she thought the byelection, to be held on 18 June, was “so consequential” because of Burnham’s support for electoral reform and proportional representation, which the Greens have long pushed for.

“This is the only way we are going to fix Britain’s democracy once and for all,” she said.