Polanski takes combative approach as Greens enter media spotlight | Green party

IThe large number of fast-growing smaller parties tend to endure some form of testing from the media in the UK. The interest in the Green party from some newspapers and broadcasters ahead of this week’s election bears an unlikely resemblance to the height of the Clegg mania in spring 2010, when the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg was rewarded for his positive polling with the Daily Mail headline “Clegg giving Nazi insult to Britain”.

All sorts of colorful stories about the Greens’ policies and personnel have emerged as the party has surged in national opinion polls, making them a target for news editors and reporters. This interest ranges from legitimate questions about members’ views to more eccentric warnings of a dire future for everyone in Britain, from exotic animals to clergy.

“Woke Greens criticize plans to license dog owners and ban zoos as ‘crazy’,” read a recent headline. Sun. Rupert Murdoch’s daily tabloid also warned both religious believers and punters in its readership that the “crazy” Greens “will dethrone the Church of England as the established church of the United Kingdom if they win the election” and intend to ban horse racing.

Meanwhile, there has also been the inevitable exposure of controversial or offensive views professed by Green candidates. The Mail on Sunday published a report revealing that someone had described justice secretary David Lammy and former home secretary Priti Patel as “coconuts”; this was a racial slur against a person who was said to be “black on the outside, white on the inside”. The newspaper also revealed that a Green candidate believes Britain should return the Falkland Islands to Argentina. “Are you still considering voting Green?” newspaper he asked.

Perhaps the most damaging incident in the context of recent attacks on Jewish people in the UK has been a series of allegations of antisemitism. On Thursday, two Green candidates running for Lambeth council were arrested for allegedly making anti-Semitic posts. Another Walsall candidate was revealed to have mentioned “Jewish cockroaches” in a social media post in 2023.

The party’s outspoken leader, Zack Polanski, came under fire himself. Polanski, who is Jewish, asked whether there was a “real threat” to the UK’s Jewish community rather than just a “perceived distrust” and this week shared a social media post after the stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green criticizing responding police officers for allegedly “repeatedly and violently kicking a mentally ill man in the head” while he was on the ground.

This sparked outrage over what many perceived as a rude response to how officers dealt with an unpredictable and potentially dangerous situation, and a letter from Met commissioner Mark Rowley criticizing the Green leader’s “inaccurate and misinformed comment”, with Polanski later apologizing “for hastily sharing a tweet”. There is no indication that this incident prevented him from standing up to those he believed had insulted him in that debate. On Saturday, the Greens said they had “settled with lawyers” over a cartoon in The Times which they said was anti-Semitic in its portrayal of their leader.

A party spokesman said: “In a climate of rising antisemitism in the UK, it is surprising that a national newspaper has chosen to publish a caricature of the country’s only Jewish political leader using tropes so clearly associated with antisemitic depictions of Jewish people.

“The words used by both politicians and the media this week, which have led to further attacks on Zack after a vicious attack on his community, are deeply irresponsible.”

Few politicians at the forefront of British politics have taken such a combative approach towards some outlets and journalists.

Saturday’s outrage was preceded by a bitter confrontation with Ed Balls on Good Morning Britain; where the presenter’s questions about Green’s border policy prompted Polanski to suggest that the former Labor minister was far from an impartial observer. Polanski later reshared a post claiming that Balls’ response to this observation made him sound like a “class bully.”

Then there was the less publicized but perhaps telling discussion in the Daily Mail about Polanski’s family. The Daily Mail publishes a series of stories under the heading “Beware of the Green Threat”. OneIn the article written by freelance reporter Nicole Lampert, it was claimed that Polanski, who has been the leader of the Greens since last September, is facing “a rebellion from his own family because they are afraid of having to leave England if the Green party leader becomes prime minister.”

Daily Mail announced that three unnamed relatives expressed their concerns about the Greens’ Gaza policy. One of them is said to have told Lampert: “He is now the leader of Britain’s future Islamic party.”

Polanski went on the offensive. In a social media post, he pointed out that national polls showed the Greens in second place behind Reform. “This is why Daily Mail journalists are going after my family right now,” he wrote. “The right-wing propaganda machine will not work on the Green party.”

Lampert responded in kind. “Daily Mail journalists are not going after your family (as you know, there’s a lot more we could write about if they were),” he wrote. “I am a freelance journalist talking to your family members who are afraid of Jew hatred in your party… Shame on you.”

He retorted: “The Daily Mail and the journalist? These words do not suit your parasitic behavior. If you try to do your daily nonsense with a newspaper that fully supports the fascists, the Green party will continue to rise. Together, we will win.”

For Lampert, himself a Jew, Polanski’s heavy-handed approach represented evidence of his “thin skin” and unfitness to govern, he argued in an article in the Jewish News.

Others sympathetic to the Greens may complain that the extravagance of this story and others illustrates the difficulties experienced by a progressive party in a right-wing media landscape – although Nigel Farage’s various political parties have suffered similarly unkind treatment in the past.

Even among those who find this highly unfair, there will be those who want to quote Enoch Powell, who said that “politicians complaining about the press are like a ship captain complaining about the sea.”

Senior figures in the Green Party and some with experience of such attention see it quite differently: The recent surge of media attention is to be celebrated, and Polanski’s strong and clear response is what people considering voting for the Greens want to see.

“Polanski has learned more from Donald Trump than from Nigel Farage,” said Gawain Towler, the reform leader’s long-time press aide.

Jenny Jones, the former deputy mayor of London and today a member of the House of Lords, was for years the Greens’ voice in the wilderness, struggling to be heard by a media understandably focused on Labor and the Conservatives.

Even last year, while ranking relatively high in the polls, the Greens struggled for airtime and appeared in only four episodes of BBC Question Time; Liberal Democrats and Reform are about a third as often as in the UK.

According to the “increasing impartiality” project carried out by Cardiff University academics, the Greens became the fifth opposition party most covered by broadcasters in 2025.

They were cited in 32 articles, behind the Conservatives (375), ahead of Reform UK (213), Liberal Democrats (116), Scottish National Party (46) and Plaid Cymru (10).

Jones said he had to “make a noise” to get attention. Since Polanski ascended to the leadership in September 2025 and won by-elections in Gorton and Denton in February, Jones said he was grateful to have been inundated with requests to appear on Times Radio or appear on the BBC.

Jones admitted that the interest of some could not really be described as well-intentioned, but he was not at all bothered by it. “Oh, I think it’s very flattering,” he said. “Of course, most of this is complete nonsense. It’s made-up stuff, but most of the time we come up with something humorous that defends what we’re saying and gives us the opportunity to counter.”

What does he think of Polanski’s approach to the story about his family members? “Turning around and letting people bite you in the gut is not the best option. You can’t let that kind of bullying continue without fighting back. I think people like that; they like that kind of clarity.”

Labor Party officials helped fill lobby reporters’ notebooks with Green Party stories. The Green Party’s media team pushed scenes behind the scenes where they felt the press had acted unfairly. He’s not afraid to “show his teeth,” as one insider put it. “We’re not really interested in what the right-wing media thinks about us, but we won’t allow that narrative to be put forward; we will be firm in our responses,” the source said.

As for the journalists who wrote the stories, one said the Greens were openly “glad that we now think they are important enough to write about”. The reporter added: “From our perspective, they’re colorful characters with crazy politics, so I think it’s more important for them to create good stories than for the bosses to worry that they’re about to win the election.”

As long as poll numbers remain high, Polanski and his colleagues can expect more of the same.