Zack Polanski left embarrassed as fresh comments defending the Lib Dems’ tuition fee hike are unearthed

Zack Polanski was embarrassed after new comments emerged defending his former party’s decision to raise college tuition fees.

Mr Polanski switched from the Liberal Democrats to the Green Party in 2017 after failing to be selected as a candidate in a by-election.

But the Mail discovered that as late as November 2016 the centrist party was still making a full-throated defense of its time in coalition with the Conservative Party.

These included supporting Nick Clegg’s decision to join the government pushing austerity and tripling tuition fees.

Despite the hard-left Green Party condemning Labour’s move to raise wages in line with inflation, Mr Polanski told a podcast that the Liberal Democrats’ decision to quash the manifesto had ‘defenses’.

Speaking on the ‘Better Meet’ podcast, Mr Polanski defended the former Liberal Democrat deputy Prime Minister:

‘Nick Clegg is a really interesting guy because it would have been so easy for me to reject the coalition now; especially from where I come from, it’s a lot more anti-party political, a lot more anti-system.

‘I would still defend most of the things the Liberal Democrats did in the coalition.’

He claimed the party had ‘defenses’ for its U-turn on no increase in tuition fees, for which Nick Clegg had to apologize.

Mr Polanski is known to have spoken at the Lib Dem conference in Autumn 2015. These latest comments were made more than a year later.

He criticized party MPs’ decision to support the bombing in Syria that year, adding: ‘The irony here is that I actually have more problems with what the party has done post-coalition.’

Addressing the U-turn on tuition fees that has caused a collapse in trust in his former party, Mr Polanski insisted: ‘I think tuition fees are the obvious issue that needs to be discussed, and I think there are arguments for that.’

‘I think I made the right choice in terms of where my values ​​generally sit, now that I know much more about the parties in detail.’

Despite losing the election to be his party’s Liberal Democrat candidate in the Richmond Park by-election in December 2016, he called on Labor and the Greens to ‘step aside and support the Liberal Democrats’.

The comments, made in late 2016, appear to be the last time Polanski publicly defended his own party before switching to the Greens.

His only known public defense of the party to date occurred a year ago at the Fall 2015 conference.

Reacting to the Liberal Democrats’ persistent defense, a Labor Party spokesman told the Daily Mail: ‘Zack Polanski tried to hypnotize voters into forgetting what he once stood for. This is the latest example of the Green leader telling people what they want to hear.

‘Polanski had previously supported with all his might the policies of the Coalition government led by the Conservative Party, which further impoverished people. ‘Voters have a chance to tell Polanski on Thursday that they haven’t forgotten Labor and that they support it.’

The Greens insisted: ‘Zack joined the Greens from the Liberal Democrats because he realized that the Green Party best represented his values.

‘It was the policy of the Liberal Democrats to triple tuition fees. It is our policy to scrap them. No wonder the Green Party is by far the most popular choice among 18-22 year olds.’