Zack Polanski enjoyed a cosy conversation with Iain Dale at the Edinburgh festival yesterday. They sounded and acted like old friends. Dale began by inviting Polanski to enlarge on his experiences growing up gay in Salford. His parents divorced when he was 11 and his wayward behaviour at school attracted a special monitoring regime, ‘full report,’ which obliged teachers to give a written assessment of his conduct after each lesson. As a teenager he was inspired by the Channel 4 series, ‘Queer As Folk,’ written by Russell T Davies.
‘I realised I should be unapologetic about who I am. And there’s so much power in that,’ said Polanski. ‘To sum up,’ added Dale, ‘Davies gave you licence to be a slut.’
The gay rights issue still troubles Polanski and he fears that his community is under attack. ‘Trans rights are the canary in the coal mine,’ he said. ‘Unless we take a stand, trans rights are going to be rolled back.’
Dale challenged this and cited Ann Widdecombe’s change of heart. She opposed gay marriage but she didn’t support repealing the law after it had been passed. ‘You can’t give something to someone and then take it back,’ was her view. ‘And if Ann Widdecombe wouldn’t reverse it, who would?’ asked Dale.
Is that the root cause of racial conflict – closed libraries? Apparently so
Polanski warned that the present Labour government ‘is going to get more wild and more extreme’ on trans rights. This led Dale to bring up the issue of transwomen who pose a threat to females in women’s jails. Polanski manoeuvred deftly and changed the question. ‘Evidence shows that women are more likely to be harmed by a partner or a family member. And trans women are more likely to be attacked by cis men,’ he said. From here, he argued that women had been duped into fighting transwomen by the cunning opponents of trans rights. Dale didn’t challenge this piece of sophistry but gave it his support by referring to an episode of his radio show that featured Katheleen Stock, the women’s activist. On the show, he asked Stock how many women had been attacked by transwomen in women’s prisons. ‘She said she didn’t know.’
Polanski shifted to immigration which he finds a more congenial topic. His policy is ‘play nicely, children.’ He argued that mistrust grows between communities because they lack shared spaces. ‘Food and drink are important places for people to get together,’ he said. And he blamed Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and the ‘austerity’ drive of David Cameron for ‘shutting down libraries and places where people integrated.’ Is that the root cause of racial conflict – closed libraries? Apparently so. ‘Get to know each other,’ was his advice. ‘And stop telling demon stories about each other.’ This goal can be achieved if we tax the rich and ‘redistribute wealth and power,’ he said. In support, Dale offered a tale about some unnamed acquaintances who panicked over the arrival of Muslim newcomers in their street. ‘They’re terrorists,’ was the assumption. But his acquaintances were wrong. Within a few weeks, everyone had become firm friends and they were ‘popping in and out of each others’ houses all the time,’ said Dale.
Then he brought up the guillotine image. Polanski recently sparked controversy by ‘accidentally’ reposting a cartoon of a guillotine beside the slogan ‘we’re only making plans for Nigel.’ It looked like a threat aimed at the Reform leader, Nigel Farage, and although Polanski acknowledged the mistake he refused to apologise for it. He blamed the BBC for highlighting it ‘over a period of three or four days’ when Europe was being consumed by wildfires. The heatwave and climate change deserved more attention than his ‘collaboration on Instagram,’ he said. And he criticised Victoria Derbyshire and Newsnight for ‘mixed messages’ over the image. By this he probably meant that the programme gave undue prominence to the image during his interview on the subject with Derbyshire.
Polanski added that the guillotine picture was an error that might have endeared him to the voters. ‘It demonstrates your vulnerability as a human being,’ he said.
He promised to challenge Reform ‘head on’. And he predicted that Labour would not filch more Green supporters unless they adopted a wealth tax and rent controls. ‘Where have rent controls worked?’ shouted a heckler. Polanski couldn’t give a direct example but he said that ‘teething problems’ shouldn’t kill a policy altogether. ‘Let’s design the problem out of it,’ he added. Many of his policy ideas sound like instant soup: take powder, add water, and stir.
Dale ended with personal questions. Has Polanski’s life changed since he became leader of the Greens? He said that he regularly hears ‘you’re a wanker’ shouted by pedestrians in the street. He waves back and says, ‘thank you.’ As the first openly gay leader of a national party, he often receives the adulation of weeping pensioners. ‘Older people come up to me with tears in their eyes and say, I never thought I’d see this moment.’
Finally, which celebrities would he invite to a dinner party?
‘Zohran Mamdani, Claudia Winkleman, Greta Thunberg and you, Iain, of course.’
Comments