After a wildly successful first eight months, Zack Polanski is facing a chronic case of boom and bust. The Green leader has endured a fairly torrid end to an otherwise successful local elections campaign, amid a string of stories about his online posts, previous claims and array of candidates standing in Thursday’s local elections. In the past 24 hours, three different stories have dropped. First, the Times revealed that Polanski had once claimed he was a ‘spokesman’ for the British Red Cross. Then, the Daily Mail reported that 30 council candidates were being probed for alleged antisemitism – following Andrew Gilligan’s revelations about Green candidates in The Spectator.
For how much longer can the Greens remain a party of both Caroline Lucas and Mothin Ali?
Now, the Greens have been forced to claim that Polanski ‘misspoke’ when he claimed on Radio 4 this morning that the alleged Golders Green attacker was handcuffed when Met police officers tried to subdue him.
Polanski is facing the classic rut of a bad media cycle. In going on the Today programme, he sought to put the allegations about his past to bed. Yet when Nick Robinson brought up the Green leader’s social media posts about the Golders Green attack, Polanski inadvertently dug himself into an even greater hole. His claim to have been ‘traumatised’ by video footage of the incident has sparked ridicule online and allowed opposition politicians to attack his law-and-order credentials.
Does all this matter? Much of Polanski’s base is instinctively sceptical of the police and he has shown an enthusiasm for attacking press outlets which are hostile towards him. But there are potential indicators that Polanski’s recent missteps have ‘cut through’. A More in Common poll released yesterday suggests his approval has dropped 14 points in a week to a net negative approval rating of 27 points. That puts him significantly below Nigel Farage (-16), Ed Davey (-12) and Kemi Badenoch (-6). One potential explanation is the disproportionately online nature of his support: having based much of his success on social media ‘virality’, those same forces can spread any potential gaffes like wildfire.
Coming at the end of an election cycle, Polanski’s gaffes are unlikely to meaningfully dent his vote on Thursday. Many Greens – including those close to the top of the party – have had their thinking shaped by the experience of Jeremy Corbyn. For them, recent criticism can be dismissed as yet more of the smears which they feel were directed at Corbyn from 2015 to 2020. They can point to projected success in places like Hackney, Haringey, Lambeth and Lewisham – four councils they could plausibly take over in 48 hours’ time. But longer-term, it remains to be seen whether Polanski can retain his party’s traditional voters while gaining new urban support. For how much longer can the Greens remain a party of both Caroline Lucas and Mothin Ali?
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