What a lucky fellow Zack Polanski is, in that his little council tax issue has come to light on the day that Keir Starmer ought to – and yet still might – resign. Amid the melee surrounding the Prime Minister, it could easily go unnoticed that the Green Party leader lived on a houseboat for three years without paying council tax to the local authority, Waltham Forest. That would be unfortunate, because it tells us rather a lot about the character of a man who could well hold the balance of power after the next election.
The behaviour of Zack Polanski, Angela Rayner and others also exposes a weakness in their thinking
When challenged on why he had not paid council tax on his houseboat at the Lee Valley Marina, where he lived with his partner, Polanski at first claimed that he didn’t need to pay because it wasn’t his main home; he claimed to be paying council tax through the rent he was paying on another property. The boat was just a place where he stayed occasionally. This was enough on its own to raise eyebrows because the Greens have an aggressive policy to tax second homes out of existence. The Scottish Greens have proposed an escalating council tax which would increase for every additional property owned. It seems to be fine, however, for the Green party leader to have a second home without paying a penny in council tax.
But then that story fell apart, partly because Polanski and his partner had boasted about their ‘amazing’ floating home; and partly because it was reported that Polanski was registered to vote at a building near the marina where his houseboat was docked. The old radicals’ cry ‘no taxation without representation’ seems to have been turned on its head in Polanski’s case. Polanski appears to think he has the right to representation without taxation.
Polanski is yet one more example of what might be called Rayner’s Law: that those who are keenest on taxing others are the least keen on paying tax themselves. If you think you are personally immune from paying tax, then you have nothing to lose by calling for ever higher taxes on others.
The behaviour of Zack Polanski, Angela Rayner and others also exposes a weakness in their thinking. They seem to think that they can use billionaires as a bottomless well of tax revenues without stopping to wonder ask themselves what happens if billionaires start to avoid paying their taxes, too.
In Polanski’s case, however, his little council tax problem comes on top of a string of revelations, not least that he once claimed to have been working at the Ministry of Justice when, in fact, he was employed by a company supplying jobbing actors for role play scenarios. That is not to mention his infamous brief career as a hypnotherapist, and the extraordinary claims he made about helping a Sun reporter to increase the size of her breasts.
Polanski is a chancer who is unfit for public office. That realisation must surely be sinking in, even among Green party supporters who have been thrilled by the party’s growth under his leadership.
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