Mick Hartley

Janice Turner in the Times – Be afraid, be very afraid of disingenuous Zack Polanski:

Yes, Polanski knows exactly what he’s doing. No political leader has ever been so immersed in social media, its codes and language, its sleights of hand. When the Economist analysed his presence on Bluesky, it found he obsessively searches his own name, “liking” around 35,000 posts a month, including anything decrying his critics, particularly journalists who press him hard.

Which he hates, especially since at next week’s local elections the Greens are poised to win councils including big London boroughs such as Lambeth and Hackney. Once, the worst to expect of a Green council was that it never emptied your bins. Now it’s bestowing power and £100 million-plus budgets on Green candidates such as Dr Rebecca Jones in Lewisham, who praised the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and urged followers to “BURN ZIONISM TO THE GROUND”; or Tina Ion in Newcastle, who trolls under the name Anne Frank and demands Israel be “deleted and I mean that in every sense possible”; or Feda Shahin in Bournemouth who called Jeffrey Epstein’s island Zionist HQ. This week two Green Party candidates in Lambeth were arrested on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred. Some, such as Mark Adderley in Croydon, are seemingly drenched in Jewish conspiracies and IDF false flags. There are many more.

Polanski has a delicate task: he must be seen to censure Jew-haters who might repel mainstream protest voters, without alienating those for whom a fervent anti-Zionism, which skirts and sometimes crosses into antisemitism, is the big draw. As seen in the Gorton & Denton by-election, the Greens are unashamedly pitching for a sectarian Muslim vote. Reeling it in is the Green deputy leader, Mothin Ali, who helped hound a rabbi out of Leeds and now advises Greens for Palestine candidates to tone down their public ravings, while proposing those expelled take legal advice about suing the party.

For the parasitic Corbynite entity that left its Labour host under Starmer, the Green Party is its greatest hope of glory. Its face is no longer a sour seventysomething allotment holder nor a messianic George Galloway, it is the fluffy, friendly CBeebie-ish Hannah Spencer or the party’s other deputy, head-girl posho Rachel Millward, who told Question Time antisemitic attacks were caused by rising prices. Not Islamists or Iranians roused to jihad by their London embassy, nor years of Hamas banners urging “globalise the intifada”, but a hike in the Tesco Meal Deal.

The Greens hope to attract rightly angry young people who crave a joyous “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn” Glastonbury moment, whose needs are disgracefully ignored by this Labour government. But in inner cities it needs that chunk of Britain’s four million Muslim voters who are attracted by hot-headed Gaza rhetoric.

I see the Greens of old, the lovers of nature, those seeking a fairer world, on the candidates list in my own borough. The Lolas and Freddies, the retired GPs and housing campaigners. But until they reclaim their party, it is wholly unfit for power, accommodating poisonous antisemites and led by a disingenuous chancer who knows exactly what he’s doing.

Polanski slipped up with his criticism of the arresting Golders Green police officers – for which he was nicely rebuked by Mark Rowley, and forced to apologise. Not that it’ll make much difference for his supporters…