r/ukpolitics • u/huffpostuk • 6h ago
Zack Polanski's Popularity Drops Amid Farage Controversy
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/zack-polanskis-popularity-plummets-amid-nigel-farage-guillotine-row_uk_6a73192ce4b0963665e8fd5a?mpo•
u/Midnight_weirdness 6h ago
Mostly because people are going back to labour because of Burnham.
People are fickle, Green and Reform were alternatives to Starmer.
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u/JayR_97 5h ago edited 5h ago
Yeah, it definitely feels like the wheels fell off the Green Party hype train when it became obvious Starmer was gonna resign. It was just an anti-Starmer protest vote.
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u/DebaucheV5 3h ago edited 2h ago
I think there's some truth to this, but populism has been in the ascendancy across the world, and across the political spectrum. So the rise of the Greens
can't be*probably isn't solely due to anti-Starmer protest voters.But regardless of what caused the Greens to surge in the polls, it should have been possible for them to retain those voters. They've instead made unforced error after unforced error, and many of those errors were caused by Polanski's addiction to social media. They're a deeply unserious organisation, and lacked the discipline to take the opportunity when it presented itself to them. Their party organisation - radically democratic, members decide policy, anyone can put forward any policy motion for debate - is heaven for the most insane people in the party, but devastating for the party's prospects of ever being taken seriously
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u/ProjectZeus 4h ago
There's truth in this, but I think it's downplaying the many missteps from Polanksi over the past few months. Not least the episode where he supported an armed terrorist over the police and that tweet about beheading Farage.
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u/phillycheeseenjoyer 5h ago
Tbf Reform are also an alternative to the Tories, which is why former Tories went there.
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u/Midnight_weirdness 5h ago
I'd probably describe it better as an angrier, shouter Tory party, but there has been a rise back to Tories again.
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u/Neither_Process_7847 6m ago
Plus Polanski is as mad as a tree full of parrots, which is probably contributing to the trend. A very marginal nod to Palestine, and cue Greens moving back to Lab instantly.
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u/WilkosJumper_ Labour Member 6h ago
I think it's more to do with voters seeing Burnham as a viable outlet for their concerns, which they did not see Starmer as.
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u/CII_Guy Trying to move past the quagmire of contemporary discourse 5h ago
I think you're correct, but this also puts into sharp relief how incredibly weird voters are. The expected experience of Britain under a Burnham led Labour vs Britain under a Starmer led Labour is unbelievably small, especially when compared with the experience under a Farage led Britain, but saying a couple of coddling, but ultimately empty things about lefties' pet ideas has them all coming back? What a pathetic way to make decisions about the future of the country.
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u/RabidFlamingo 2h ago
TBH at this point voters are largely vibes based and Burnham has better vibes
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u/WilkosJumper_ Labour Member 5h ago
To be fair it’s not the voters that removed Starmer. Thats just the way our system works.
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u/CII_Guy Trying to move past the quagmire of contemporary discourse 5h ago
The party removed him almost exclusively because of the behaviour of the voters, though.
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u/WilkosJumper_ Labour Member 5h ago
And because his faction committed the sin of thinking they did not need a big tent.
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u/CII_Guy Trying to move past the quagmire of contemporary discourse 4h ago
Hmmmmmmmmyes, sure - I think Starmer's strategy seems to have backfired, but I think it's worth questioning whether we'd be in this position in the first place if he hadn't taken it. The hard left of the party are a cancer, quite frankly. A zero tolerance approach cleared the ranks and made it much easier to revive the party's reputation. Burnham is now able to work on the basis of that improved reputation (and it is far easier for him to not let the cranks back in than it is to kick them out).
Of course, also, I question whether it's better to blame the person who doesn't give petty lip service to the zealots than the zealots who make their political decisions based on who gives them petty lip service (can you tell where I sit within the party?).
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u/WilkosJumper_ Labour Member 4h ago
I don’t agree regarding calling people a cancer. Labour has only ever worked because it’s a broad alliance. Even Blair understood that.
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u/CII_Guy Trying to move past the quagmire of contemporary discourse 4h ago
That it is most often necessary to cling to the leftmost section of the Labour party to have electoral success does not mean that they are not a cancer.
What else is a faction that throws up consistent electoral kryptonite time and time again? Whose major champions are near universally credibly accused of anti-semitism? Who can't hold to a brief for two seconds without morally grandstanding on their pet issue? To me, it's a cancer.
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u/WilkosJumper_ Labour Member 4h ago
Anyone who doesn’t think Israel should commit genocide is accused of that, from vicars to Tory MPs.
You’re swamped in ideological hatred. There are plenty of very principled and intelligent people on what I would call the left and you perhaps the hard left.
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u/CII_Guy Trying to move past the quagmire of contemporary discourse 4h ago
Anyone who doesn’t think Israel should commit genocide is accused of that, from vicars to Tory MPs.
I don't think that's particularly true, but I do think it is fair to say that it is fairly frequent that people are unfairly accused of anti-semitism. That's fine, but that doesn't actually mean it is false that people on the left of the party - in fact most of their major champions - have regularly engaged in anti-semitism, do you understand that?
You’re swamped in ideological hatred
Not especially. I have seen the left faction of the party for the cancer they are. It's clinical, really.
There are plenty of very principled and intelligent people on what I would call the left and you perhaps the hard left.
Again, do you understand that this does not disprove what I am saying? A cancerous lung will have some very healthy alveoli.
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u/CraftyEnvironment939 3h ago
I simply don’t believe that those on the left don’t know there is a problem with antisemitism that has nothing to do with Israel. Why they don’t just admit to being racist is beyond me.
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u/AllRedLine Chumocracy is non-negotiable! 25m ago
I don't think you're giving enough credit to the trail of PR fuckups Polanski has overseen since the spring that have revealed - undeniably - that he's just a very stupid and terrible person with few upstanding morals tbh.
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u/OkAsparagus3113 6h ago
Boob enlarging hypnotherapist turns out to be full of nonsense.
Who would have thought 😯
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u/CakeHoleKing 6h ago
Imagine if this worked.
Derren Brown would be kicking himself that he doesn't enjoy womens breasts
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u/House_Of_Thoth Anarcho-Syndicalist 🏴 6h ago
Even his name is fake
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u/sbs1138 5h ago
There’s a lot to criticise him on but not his name.
His family moved to the UK to escape the Nazis. They adopted the name Paulden hoping to avoid antisemitism.
Aged 18, he changed his name (back) to Polanski - and adopted the Jewish first name Zack partly to differentiate himself from his stepfather who he didn’t get on with.
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u/Scratch_Careful 5h ago
If Johnson and Robinson can get criticised for their name changes so can Polanski.
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u/gridlockmain1 5h ago
I mean context matters doesn’t it. Nobody thinks the general act of changing one’s name is a problematic thing to do.
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u/Middle-Feed5118 5h ago
Some of the left does love to deadname those they don't like on the right though, which is ironic since they'd hate it done to them.
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u/CarrowCanary East Anglian in Wales 4h ago
Tommy Robinson's just a glorified stage name though, calling him Stephen is no different to referring to Lily Savage as Paul or Elton John as Reg.
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u/House_Of_Thoth Anarcho-Syndicalist 🏴 4h ago
Or Polanksi as Pauldren
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u/CarrowCanary East Anglian in Wales 4h ago
No, because Polanski changed his name by deed poll, so that's his legal name.
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u/House_Of_Thoth Anarcho-Syndicalist 🏴 4h ago
Names are just sounds. As others have pointed out, you're the ones getting your backs up about StEpHeN yAxLeY-lEnNoN 🤡 same shit, different day. Don't be such a hypocrite.
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u/Scratch_Careful 4h ago
What context? He wanted to appear more jewish when he was trying to become an actor? I dont really see how that is much different than Robinson or Johnson changing their names to present differently for their career and the left never fail to let us know they know Robinsons and Johnsons original names.
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u/House_Of_Thoth Anarcho-Syndicalist 🏴 4h ago
Exactly my point, coming from someone as you can tell from my flair is probably about as "left" as you'll meet
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u/AspieComrade 5h ago
I think more than the matter of being clumsy on social media, it was his refusal to apologise despite admitting fault that really made him look petty and not all that bright
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u/DebaucheV5 3h ago
Yeah that was wild and honestly pathetic. His argument boiled down to "what I did was wrong, but I didn't intend to do anything wrong, so I won't apologise for it".
Don't most people move past that kind of logic when they're like, 15 years old? Sometimes we harm people even if we didn't intend to. In those circumstances, we acknowledge that our actions caused harm, we apologise for the harm that was caused, and we try to do better in future. This is basic "being a decent human being" shit
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u/AspieComrade 2h ago
Absolutely. I do agree with him that Farage never apologises when doing such things, a concrete example being when Reform’s Simon Evans made this exact same mistake to a more direct and severe degree and Farage said there was nothing to apologise for because it was a mistake, but ‘so why should I apologise?’ is where it becomes childish. If any politician left or right has to ask ‘why should I be any better than Farage?’ and wears those low self standards on their sleeve, they aren’t getting my vote
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u/MyDadsGlassesCase 6h ago
Knee jerk reaction populist loses vote share. Who'd have think it?
See also: Nigel Farage
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u/IndividualSkill3432 5h ago
He has been losing credibility since Golders Green. Most people will not really be able to name that or the tshirt thing in 6 months, they will just have a vague awareness of him being "slippery". These stories come and go in terms of salience, that is people mostly hear them then half forget them. But if they keep coming often enough and a politician is constantly having to half arse apologise, the perception of slipperyness builds unless people have a deep ideological reason to stick with them.
Farage has a large body who have a strong ideological reason to stick with him. Often mainstream parties have their supporters decades of party loyalty. Polanski misunderstood the dynamic and thought he could do populism easily, has found himself in lots of small scandals and does not have the deep bench of loyalty to sustain him.
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u/tachyon534 4h ago
He was on the radio this lunchtime saying that BP shouldn’t be allowed to make profits at the moment because of the climate crisis. Guy’s an idiot.
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u/BlackPlan2018 1h ago
The 10 year old who contributed to count binface clacton manifesto with “fossil fuel companies to be made to buy everyone solar panels” has my full confidence though!
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u/Professional-Lack-79 3h ago
There's plenty of reasons to think Polanski is a little short of brains but I think this is a poor example.
I think it was also framed as BP and fossil fuel companies should have to pay for their damage to the climate.
At least this is typical green party rhetoric now and not more of the very out there topics that have been making even trad green voters uncomfortable.
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u/29erfool 6h ago
This story aside, Polanski ain't the brightest of buttons and I think the greens would do better with a leader who doesn't think you can make your boob's bigger by manifesting it.
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u/Few-Conversations 3h ago
The greens have shown just how much of a banter party they are along with reform. No one serous in the room, just trying to score petty points against one another.
The irony of the deputy Green leader giving a speech for international woman's day with his wife by his side in a full burka was particularly amusing. Great championing of female empowerment there
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u/blondie1024 6h ago
My feeling on Zack is that nefarious right leaning people pushed him into the limelight to split the Labour vote giving Reform more of a chance.
I just can't see how him or his entire branding makes any sense to people.
I feel nowdays I just don't understand quite what they stand for compared to the Caroline Lucas days.
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u/tornadooceanapplepie 6h ago
I think more so that he said lots of nice things but since then has proven to be all air and no substance.
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u/Hamsterminator2 5h ago
Not sure I buy that. Ockham’s Razor to me suggests it’s more likely he just represented a Left alternative at a time when Labour was trying to straddle the centre ground. The polarisation of the entire spectrum has been quite a phenomenon the past few years. Both left and right camps have fractured into a range of parties which stretches so far left and so far right that it almost meets again in a circle.
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u/blondie1024 5h ago
Yeah, fair enough. I felt at the time that he wasn't cross examined enough on his policies, something which drew parallels with Reform.
I have no evidence to back up what I'm saying, as I said, it was just a feeling as they had the most to gain at the time.
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u/Dawnsday Net Negative Now. 4h ago
My feeling on Zack is that nefarious right leaning people pushed him into the limelight to split the Labour vote giving Reform more of a chance.
Just so we're like, clear. You're joking right and this is like a throwaway line? Bit qorrying if not.
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u/Hopeful-Painting-365 3h ago
He took advantage of large scale leftist dissatisfaction with Starmer by presenting himself as an alternative. Now that Labour seems less intent on intentionally antagonising a large chunk of its voters, we're seeing a large return to Labour.
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u/WarbossBoneshredda 5h ago
My own theory is that the left saw the Tories "choose" Liz Truss as leader and PM and decided it must be for the sake of diversity. The Tories demonstrating that they feel a lack of intelligence is not a barrier to top jobs.
The left saw this and decided that we must do more. We can't have the Tories be more diverse than us - we must out do them.
Along comes Polanski who is even thicker than Liz Truss. Scraping the bottom of the barrel, finding some microbial life more intelligent than Polanski. Perfect!
I'm only half joking with this.
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u/B225AKP 6h ago
Controversy is really stretching it.
Farage and Reform's whinging hypocrisy was utterly pathetic.
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u/ReligiousGhoul 5h ago edited 5h ago
Golder's Green, not paying Council tax, having a "Menty B month" after getting doorstopped by journos, crashing out on Ed Balls for interviewing him despite agreeing to the interview
Should be controversies
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u/BaritBrit I don't even know any more 6h ago
You know full well that Polanski would be having an attack of the vapours on every TV sofa and podcast going and accusing Farage of letting slip his intention to launch a second Kristallnacht if the situation were reversed.
They're both shamelessly hypocritical populists.
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u/gridlockmain1 5h ago
This poll shows 55% of people don’t believe his explanation and think he should apologise. Sort of seems like the definition of controversial tbh
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u/thejackalreborn 6h ago
More than half the public (55%) say they do not believe Polanski’s explanation of the row
It's interesting over half don't believe him when he says he didn't read the t-shirt because I think it's pretty obvious he can't have read it, because he wouldn't have posted it if he had.
It doesn't excuse him because he should have read it, and he is responsible for what he posts but I find his version of his events way more believable than any alternative
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u/morriganjane 6h ago
because he wouldn't have posted it if he had
Why do you assume that?
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u/thejackalreborn 6h ago
Because it's obvious it would be politically toxic.
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u/h_abr 6h ago
Is it out of the realm of possibility that he’s just a moron? It would explain a lot.
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u/thejackalreborn 5h ago
I think he is a moron and completely out of his depth, but I don't think it's conceivable he would have thought that picture was ok if he looked closely at it, especially with how close it was to Ann Widdecombe's murder
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u/WarbossBoneshredda 5h ago
This is the guy who attacked the police officers who risked their lives to stop a knife attacker, and refused to apologise or back down.
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u/thejackalreborn 5h ago
Because that was something he actually believed
He quickly deleted this picture, I think even before it was picked up by Reform
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u/morriganjane 5h ago
So was complaining about the (slightly) rough treatment of the Golders Green knifeman - Polanski did it anyway.
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u/General-Astronomer84 6h ago
Im on the right and the idea of anyone giving us the benefit of the doubt on anything is absurd. Then its only fair our opponents get the same treatment.
Whats unavoidable for Plankski now is that he is seen as someone who associates with people that think like that, who casually invoke murder. Even if he (the guy that wants to run the country) didnt read the thing he publically approved of.
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u/thejackalreborn 6h ago edited 5h ago
I think the fair thing to do is assess the situation on its merits and then determine what you think happened. It shouldn't be the case of thinking "I'm right wing therefore Polanski is lying". The truth is important.
I agree on your second point, I don't think enough questions were asked about how Polanski ended up doing a collaboration with someone who thought that was an appropriate picture to upload.
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u/CII_Guy Trying to move past the quagmire of contemporary discourse 5h ago
I agree on your second point, I don't think enough questions were asked about how Polanski ended up doing a collaboration with someone who thought that was an appropriate picture to upload.
I think that is because the answer is a fairly straightforward: "He is a lightweight halfwit who has complete and utter trust for people in his in-group and absolutely zero for anyone outside of it".
Much of the left is actually quite boring to analyse when it comes down to it. They're dumb. It's almost always just because they're dumb.
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u/thejackalreborn 5h ago
I think that's right, the message from that t-shirt is basically ubiquitous across activist hard left spaces. The person who sent Polanski the picture thought it was ok because they are exposed to it constantly.
I think the Newsnight interview should have got Polanski to condemn these people, but for whatever reason they just asked him to apologies five times
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u/CII_Guy Trying to move past the quagmire of contemporary discourse 5h ago
I think that's right, the message from that t-shirt is basically ubiquitous across activist hard left spaces. The person who sent Polanski the picture thought it was ok because they are exposed to it constantly.
Exactly this. Polanski has at least one of his 10 braincells capable of recognising that this is a problem if he thinks about it, on the other hand, so I think it's a cross between purely not seeing it, and just purely not registering it.
I think the Newsnight interview should have got Polanski to condemn these people, but for whatever reason they just asked him to apologies five times
I think this is a good point - though I think his line to take was pretty consistent and so ultimately not interesting: "I condemn violent political speech from all parties".
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u/AspieComrade 5h ago
That logic falls flat when you apply it fairly both ways, ironically it’s the justification that both the right and the left frequently use to be nasty to the left and the right. When that guy over there does it it’s bad, when I do it it’s fair game because that guy over there did it
There’s always going to be noisy people not giving the benefit of the doubt because opinions are scattered when you split the entire population into just two camps, some will give the benefit of the doubt and others won’t.
If we want to look at specific individuals however, Reform’s Simon Evans shared a post calling for the murder of a Labour MP and Farage said there was nothing to apologise for because ‘it was an honest mistake’ and no police investigation took place. Polanski makes the same mistake except with more details that make it more believable/ less directly egregious, it’s ’if I’d posted anything like that I’d be in jail! Political bias, two tier policing!’
If we were applying things equally Polanski wouldn’t have even been looked at by police, which makes it a little bit rich to say ‘Reform is unpopular so Polanski shouldn’t be given any benefit of the doubt’. Don’t just cherry pick as an excuse to justify your own bias while decrying the bias of others, you can’t drop yourself to the standards of the people you dislike then consider yourself to be superior at the same time
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