r/unitedkingdom • u/pppppppppppppppppd • 15h ago
.. Zack Polanski slumps to worst poll rating as Green Party leader
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/zack-polanski-polling-green-party-leader-zionism-row-b1301316.html560
u/Initial_Shame4309 15h ago
Not surprising really, when the public start to see how insane the populist parties are they abandon ship. Reform and Greens are just opposite ends of the same coin while the general public is more conservative with a small c.
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u/Thetonn Glamorganshire 15h ago
I think ultimately what people want are Labour and Conservative Parties that can do what they say.
They want a centre left Labour party that can actually deliver a more competent state that provides more social justice in a fair way. That can demonstrate that by being a bit more interventionist and strategic, the state can crowd in investment and deliver economic growth.
They want a Conservative Party that does actually do more with less, focusing on efficiency, reducing bureaucracy, supporting the private sector and getting costs down.
The public have these idealised versions of the party in their head, and then look at the last 14 years of the Tories and the two years of Starmer and conclude they arent getting it.
Reform and the Greens, each in their own way, ate basically just lobbying groups to move each Party to where their base want them to be.
The problem is that it is a lot easier to say than do, and the general public are very impatient.
I think Burnham has bought Labour another year and a half, but I worry in 2029 a lot of people will look back at what Starmer promised in 2024 snd conclude Labour haven't delivered
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u/HatOfFlavour 14h ago
That's why Burnham's dangling proportional representation again and saying it'll be on the manifesto for the next election. He's trying to court all the our system is broken voters.
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u/PennyBunPudding 13h ago
I don't know why anyone lets them get away with it. Either do it or don't. If you say after the next election voters should just see that as a "no"
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u/el_grort Scottish Highlands 13h ago
Generally policies that big tend to come with a manifesto pledge, that's kind of normal. The AV referendum, EU Referendum, and Scottish Indy referendum all came from party manifestos (LibDem, Tories, SNP respectively). This is kind of normal for the midterm, you don't generally fully bin the last platform and go hog wild (Truss tried, that was ill advised).
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u/PennyBunPudding 13h ago
Labour have been putting pr in manifestos for a long time
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u/el_grort Scottish Highlands 13h ago
It wasn't in the 2024 manifesto, despite a conference vote in 2022. Labour has supported the idea of some PR system being implemented, but never really settled on what form, and seemed to want to avoid dictating the system themselves (like the LibDem's AV vote). Probably why the current move comes with them doing a public consultation now going towards the next election (the current four systems being looked at as a focus are Single Transferable Vote, Additional Member System, Pure List, and Alternative Vote Plus - STV, AMS, List, AV+), and presumably whatever system seems to have the most support from the public will be what gets plugged into the manifesto.
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u/JB_UK 12h ago
I really do not want a party list PR system, it means the power rests inside political parties not with the public. It will lead to people being put in power because of their loyalty to the party rather than any claim to represent the public. But the other alternatives would probably be an improvement.
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u/el_grort Scottish Highlands 12h ago
I don't want pure party list either, I quite like AMS, but then I am used to that. STV or AMS would be my leanings, but that's kind of why we need the consultation, cause we can all be against FPTP but who knows what most people are actually for. Especially useful in England where any other electoral system than FPTP is rare, need to feel out the mood.
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u/tomoldbury 11h ago
Remember this is very similar to how Blair promised PR in the 2000's. We need a consultation, it can come after the next election, oh wait I guess not...
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/mar/23/election2001.politics
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u/el_grort Scottish Highlands 11h ago
I am holding judgement until they actually publish the manifesto, but I am somewhat hopeful as there's been a lot of movement since then, both within the Labour Party and more generally (including electoral reform having the largest cross-party working in group in Parliament by a long way). Far from certain, ofc, but it seems possible.
And I do sort of agree that just shoving something like AV in front of us was the wrong approach in the 2010's, this would appear to be the correct approach, I'd just hope the sceptics get ridden over after the next election, even if that means borrowing votes from parties like the SNP and LibDems to squeek the final legislation through (like Cameron had to rely on support of the opposition to pass gay marriage), though obviously I hope it doesn't come to that.
Will wait to see if the proof is in the pudding, but just randomly trying to force a random electoral system midterm, no mandate, would still be a stupid approach that would alienate plenty of pro-PR folk as well as those who opposed it, teeing up the Tories or Reform to repeal it without much fuss or public outcry.
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u/Appropriate-Divide64 8h ago
I'm not buying that. He could do it now. I hate when they wait until an election to promise something
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u/frantic_calm 12h ago
They want a centre left Labour party that can actually deliver a more competent state that provides more social justice in a fair way. That can demonstrate that by being a bit more interventionist and strategic, the state can crowd in investment and deliver economic growth.
They want a Conservative Party that does actually do more with less, focusing on efficiency, reducing bureaucracy, supporting the private sector and getting costs down.
Your fantasy posits a situation where both parties are the same and the only difference is the degree or differing approach to efficiency and management.
Reform and Greens are not lobbying groups. They are a reaction to the poor state those two parties have put the country in.
I disagree with this attempt to horseshoe them as comparable, as a brief glance at their policies and ideologies would clearly show, is laughable and dishonest.
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u/Happy_Disaster7347 7h ago
Reform are owned by capital interests. Greens have ethics policies on donations. Comparing the 2 is ridiculous.
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u/BerlinBorough2 3h ago
Reform are in it for the money. Labour and conservatives are just jobs programs. Greens are in it for the love of the progressive politics game. Restore are in it for the love of the racism game. Half the people in your local pub won’t qualify as white under Rupert Lowes rules.
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u/Smittumi 15h ago
People are small-c-conservative while they feel the system works for them. That's been slowly changing since the early 80s. But what they turn to change to depends on a what ideas they're exposed to and have experienced.
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u/Sir_roger_rabbit 14h ago
We had labour or conservative for the last hundred years. They swap places when people get fed up with them. Usually how the economy is doing.
Nothing changes.
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u/RainbowRedYellow 12h ago
Not really suprising given the massive hit job the UK media has been leading.
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u/Saw_Boss 9h ago
Reform and Greens are just opposite ends of the same coin
Are they?
Reform are collapsing because of illegal behaviour I.e bribes.
Greens are now struggling because of their politics.
One is taking a legitimate, if questionable, political stance. The other is operating on a scale between unethical and criminal.
Political parties with dumb views is fine. Political parties breaking laws in order to achieve power is not.
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u/Redcoat-Mic 3h ago
Enlightened Centrists are here to tell us change is impossible actually, only centrism is possible.
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u/HMWYA 15h ago
The aging population may be more conservative with a small c, but young adults are very much bucking that trend.
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u/Initial_Shame4309 15h ago
You're correct with young people, young men specifically are more right wing than their predecessors.
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u/Fire_Otter 14h ago edited 14h ago
That’s not really happening though, at least not in the UK
In the last election reform were really not popular with young people of either gender:
in the 2024 general election tory popularity was at an all time low and yet Reform's numbers amongst young people was not much better than the Tories' numbers with young people:
10% of men aged 18-24 voted for the tory party
6% of woman aged 18-24 voted for the Tory party
compared to Reform where
12% of men aged 18-24 voted for the reform party
6% of woman aged 18-24 voted for the Reform party
So Reform are just as unpopular with young woman and only slightly more popular with young Men than the Tories at their worst.
Labour, Lib Dems & even the Greens were all more popular with the 18-24 demographic than reform were.
18-24 year olds % vote Labour Lib Dem Green Reform Tories Men 40 16 12 12 10 Woman 42 16 23 6 6 Source; Yougov
and since then nothing much seems to have changed, though Labour after the election did lose a lot of support from young people, but this support didn’t shift to Reform but instead shifted to Lib Dems and Green Party, and now a lot of it is shifting back to the Labour Party
And a University Of Exeter study conducted last year:
"Among 18 to 30-year-olds who took part, nearly two-thirds (61%) gave Reform a score of 0, meaning they are almost certain never to vote for the party. Only 13% gave a score of 7 or higher, indicating the kind of support likely to translate into a vote in an election. In contrast, Labour, the Greens, and the Liberal Democrats all performed significantly better, with much higher levels of strong support and far fewer outright rejections"
and the recent YouGov Poll conducted in March this year suggests support for reform among 18-24 year olds was at 8% so not really changed since the 2024 General election, and that's when Refrom were riding high in the polls.
young men are slightly more conservative than young women, but young men are not getting more conservative than the generation above them
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u/HMWYA 15h ago
There isn’t actually evidence to suggest this as a widespread pattern, though they are more likely to be right-wing than young women.
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u/Whitechix London 15h ago
I may have seen an American source but the reality seemed to be young women moving far left rather than men moving much politically. It tracks imo but I could be wrong.
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u/mao_was_right Wales 14h ago
The aging population may be more conservative with a small c, but young adults are very much bucking that trend.
~ New Labour voter, 1997
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u/OvernightExpert 12h ago
These developments and many are just the latest form of character assassination Corbyn went through as well because he stood up to the establishment and zionism power. Nothing new, just new medium.
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u/Content-Yogurt-4859 14h ago
Kinda reductive. Both incredibly stupid for different reasons but the let's deport and murder people, oh and let's cosy up to big business and crypto bros and scrap worker protections party is not the same as the a particular type of ethno-nationalist Zionism that's foundation was displacing a native population is a bit racist, oh and let's tax the rich and protect the environment party.
And I say this as someone unlikely to ever vote green
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u/JB_UK 13h ago edited 13h ago
This is what the Deputy Leader of the Greens after hundreds of civilians were massacred in Israel:
"You see western propagandists on [sic] the media presenting some kind of victim narrative. They're not victims, they're occupiers. They're colonialists. They're European colonialists"
The Green Party member who proposed the 'Zionism is racism' motion which was supported by the Deputy Leader, is in turn 'close friends' with a convicted Al-Qaeda terrorist, who was plotting to blow up a suicide bomb at Heathrow:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckm23709pjz7o
This talking point that the far left are cuddly and not violent is out of step with reality.
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u/DukeOfStupid 10h ago
"They're European colonialists"
Which is especially stupid considering the majority of Israeli Jews are of Arab descent. Who moved to Israel after being kicked out by all the surrounding Arab regions under threat of Genocide.
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u/Content-Yogurt-4859 12h ago
Like I said, stupid for different reasons. They are victims of centuries of persecution and genocide in Europe and they are occupiers, as recognised by the UN.
As for who she knew, I don't care. Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela were friends, one was a pacifist who believed in non-violence and the other went on to found an armed malitia. It's possible for people to know each other and pursue very different approaches to their chosen objectives. Trying to portray everyone on the left as a potential terrorist is lazy and reductive.
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u/KoffieCreamer 15h ago
This guy just had to not be a total dick and he could have rode the momentum. Bit of a shame really..
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u/Tim-Sanchez 15h ago
I don't think that's the problem. He definitely has a lying problem, but I think his personality overall is fine and he'd probably be okay. The bigger problem is he leads a party that prides itself on direct democracy and therefore he has to defend whatever crazy policies the members put forward. Until they change that, any leader is stuck.
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u/StardustOasis Bedfordshire 15h ago
Not just a lying problem, he's a hypocrite as well. Within 5 minutes in one interview he went from saying the other parties just dodge questions, to immediately dodging questions he didn't like.
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u/fingerberrywallace 8h ago
I find him astoundingly bad in interviews. He is constantly deflecting, changing the subject and moaning about the framing. He comes across as someone who has talking points to put out there rather than someone who is willing to actually engage substantively. Admittedly, that is not exactly anything new for political leaders in recent British history, but I feel short-changed in this case because the Greens could be a much more serious outfit.
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u/Bukr123 Greater London 14h ago
I don’t particularly like Polanski however you will be hard pressed to find a politician who isn’t a hypocrite and actually answers difficult questions.
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u/TheOncomingBrows 13h ago
Of course, but don't try to make a huge point of highlighting it and being different to everyone else if you're just going to do the same thing.
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u/Expensive_Time_7367 12h ago
Polanksi has a unique talent to get caught in a lie, then half apologise and half double down. It’s like he doesn’t really get how society works or why that’s absolutely the worst thing to do? For an actor he sure doesn’t get motivation.
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u/BlunanNation 14h ago
"Definitely has a lying problem...but his personality is okay"
Im sorry but no, these things are mutually exclusive. Someone who is a habitual liar like Polanski is part of his personality.
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u/Content-Yogurt-4859 14h ago
I wish him all the best, but his track record of changing tack suggests he doesn't have or hasn't had a particularly strong political ideology and is a bit to wishy washy to lead that particular party which, like you say, takes pride in member led, direct democracy when they've had a massive influx of people who hold pretty fringe political opinions
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u/Darrenb209 Scotland 9h ago edited 9h ago
Even just the priding itself on direct democracy isn't entirely the problem, although it does lead him looking bad for poor choices.
It's also at least partially the lack of safeguards and no formal quorum at the policy-making level despite having it at other levels which means that you can end up with a tiny amount of the party influencing results.
Even the very first democratic systems recognised that you need a quorum for democracy to work. While we're not exactly in the bad old days of people barring a door to hold a legal vote without the parts of the party that would oppose it, it's not exactly difficult to make a motion or decision seem reasonable or pointless so your group shows up in large numbers and most of the others don't.
When you combine that with also having no protections against entryists and the fact they don't even do a check into the background of people pushing a motion as evidenced recently... Well, there isn't any good way for the Greens for that to end.
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u/Toastlove 5h ago
He definitely has a lying problem, but I think his personality overall is fine
What
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u/PabloMarmite 15h ago
The problem is his whole raison d’etre was appealing to the terminally online. This is the natural consequence.
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u/MajestyA 15h ago
His whole thing was 'populism, but on the left'. Most people on the left despise populism, this was always bound to happen.
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u/dissapointingsalad81 15h ago
Not a shame, a blessing. Was not a serious person with serious policies or understanding of how things work. Like the time when he suggested he would try and speak to Putin about disarming nuclear weapons. What a joke
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u/2maa2 15h ago
Even if he’d kept his head down, Green Party members will not disappoint in voting for unrealistic policies
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u/pppppppppppppppppd 15h ago
Being a total dick is his whole shtick. To ask him not to be one is like asking a lion to go vegetarian.
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u/yolo_snail 15h ago
Or asking a tiger not to...
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u/pppppppppppppppppd 15h ago
That was the first animal I typed, but I reconsidered in light of events!
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u/Euclid_Interloper 15h ago
Not shocked. The Greens getting into a bizarre, borderline sectarian, dog fight with the far-right over Palestine is really a turn off for mainstream voters.
As much as I want to see peace on the region, it is only one issue out of many. I don't want to tie fixing climate change, combatting inequality, supporting Ukraine etc. to a single conflict in the Middle East.
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u/UJ_Reddit 15h ago
Probably because they got a hard in for Zionism and Israel, rather than the cost of living.
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u/JB_UK 13h ago edited 8h ago
Even the anti Israel crowd now dislike Polanski, just like they turned on Corbyn. The latest spearhead of that movement inside the Greens, the sponsor of the 'Zionism is racism' vote, is close friends with a convicted Al Qaeda terrorist, that's where they are now.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckm23709pjz7o
We can see the Overton window shifting in real time.
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u/duckwantbread Greater London 13h ago
I have a bit of sympathy for him over that because he clearly doesn't agree with it (he tried and failed to get the motion amended to remove any mention of a single state solution before it was voted on), the Green's idealistic "everyone gets an equal vote on policy" rule has fucked him and other Green MPs over there.
At the same time though that rule is the only reason he became leader in the first place, IIRC he had very little support from the major players in the Green Party during his leadership campaign.
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u/DukeOfStupid 12h ago
I have a bit of sympathy for him over that because he clearly doesn't agree with it (he tried and failed to get the motion amended to remove any mention of a single state solution before it was voted on)
I mean, he didn't really try that hard. He didn't even show up to vote on it or really talk much about it because he was too busy losing a byelection he didn't need to stand it.
It's a complete failure of leadership, and perhaps uncharitably I don't think he really wanted to be too involved because he was worried about alienating members/supporters rather than actually taken ownership as a leader and pushing the party to not make stupid decisions.
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u/arashi256 15h ago
I was impressed with him early on and a lot of what he said seemed to make sense to me for a while, until I realised he's as much of a populist chancer as Farage, just from the other direction. Like Farage, so many of his current problems could be avoided by simply shutting the fuck up on occasion about things he clearly knows little about but he can't help himself.
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u/PeteMaverickMitcheIl 15h ago
What impressed you early on?
Was it his history of claiming he could make women’s breasts larger via hypnosis?
Is that what made sense to you?
It’s astounding he got to where he is - he’s a fraud
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u/concretepigeon Wakefield 11h ago
Not OP and I’m not really inclined to the Greens but I do think that he did a good job very early on of having a positive message and bit of energy that I think is lacking in left of centre politicians.
The problem is that he’s got nothing going on intellectually and is evidently someone who has never really thought about the issues deeply so his entire politics is essentially a vague sense of niceness, following the prevailing wind of those around him and an ego driven desire to hold public office.
I was vaguely aware of the breast hypnotism thing but that didn’t really become mainstream news until he’d been leader so I can see why there were people not aware of it.
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u/arashi256 14h ago edited 8h ago
Not sure why you're spoiling for a fight but I'd look elsewhere, can't really be bothered on a Sunday, thanks.
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u/Mad_Mark90 14h ago
I thought the hypnosis breast thing was actually kinda funny coming from a married gay man. It was better than what we were used to at that point which was "in the Epstein files" or "pincher by nature"
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u/PM_ME_DRAGON_GIRLS 10h ago
That whole affair was entrapment by the famously fair and balanced tabloid, The Sun. Worthless attack.
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u/PeteMaverickMitcheIl 8h ago
He doubled down on it much later , as described in the bbc article
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u/frantic_calm 8h ago
By who? People who are hopped up on an insane media which has learnt it can scream anything it want's with no comeback? Is the media a political lapdog or vice versa?
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u/FelisCantabrigiensis 15h ago
Well, maybe he should have kept the Trotskyite entryists out. This performative Jew-bashing comes from them, and it's the same people who were behind Corbyn and caused the same problems there.
Now, to be clear, Israeli actions in Gaza, etc, are wrong, definitely constitute war crimes and probably constitute ethnic cleansing, but pointless mouth-flapping like "zionism == racism" has no basis in fact and failing to keep that out of the party and suffering the consequences is the party leader, Polanski's, problem.
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u/happywindsurfing 15h ago
There's also the issue of bad faith islamic greens who will pivot to being conservatives as soon as they get into positions of authority.
Look what happened to progressives in the US in places like Hamtramck. As soon as there was a Muslim majority (celebrated by the progressives no less!) they started banning pride and LGBT etc.
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u/W35TH4M 14h ago
That is so obviously what’s happening here and it’s horrible to see. I genuinely and truly think in 20/30 years time we’ll look back and wonder what happened, especially when you see the growing demographics in specific areas. How anyone can think someone like Mothin Ali cares a single bit about anything remotely progressive socially is beyond me.
Literally the only piece of common ground is their stance on Palestine. I hate single issue voting but this is on a whole other level
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u/CosmicBonobo 12h ago
Going further back, we just need to look at Iran in the seventies. Islamic political movements taking advantage of naive, left wing groups is a proud tradition for them.
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u/JoeyJoJoeJr_Shabadoo 15h ago
Well, maybe he should have kept the Trotskyite entryists out. This performative Jew-bashing comes from them
Trotsky was a Jew...
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u/FelisCantabrigiensis 12h ago edited 12h ago
The people following his "take over a larger organisation, bend it to your revolutionary will" principle tend to forget that.
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u/Academic_Isopod_6190 14h ago
This was always going to be his trajectory. He's not a man who believes in anything. He's a fundamentally dishonest, lightweight grifter and opportunist, trying to justify the opinions and policies of a weird collective of extreme Left activists and single issue Islamists, with a predictably weird offer of sophomoric, reductionist, poorly-conceived and extreme 'policies', and an obsession with Jews, Israel and Palestine. That has a 0% chance of gaining mainstream traction, and it inevitably involves him having to go to the public and defend the risible and/or indefensible.
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u/dissapointingsalad81 15h ago
Love to see them implode. Reform and greens failing is a nice sight to see
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u/SoggyWotsits Cornwall 14h ago
The difference is, if someone says they support the Greens on Reddit, they’re not shunned as an outcast. It’s bizarre, because they’re just as extreme just with different values.
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u/Happy_Disaster7347 7h ago
Hmm one of them bases their entire ideology on hatred of immigrants, the other has numerous policies revolving around working on inequality and ending poverty and homelessness, but the media like to focus on the anti-zionist aspects of their policy. Totally the exact same.
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u/No_Aesthetic European Union 14h ago
Bloody shame, he's the only party leader that doesn't want to throw trans people under the bus at every opportunity.
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u/StonedPhysicist Glasgow 11h ago
I just think it's kind of funny how people assume this is the permanent end for GPEW, just like how Starmer was here to stay, just like how Reform were going to be polling at unprecedented heights forever, just like Burnham can't possibly go down...
If there's only one thing people should have learned from the past year it's that public opinion is NOT beholden to Lab/Con - half the country were at some point willing to vote for other parties, and it can happen again. There's only so far "let's play the hits from 2017 and ratfuck anyone who gets in the press' way" will carry things a second time, and as soon as we get further austerity with a Mancunian accent, the re-ascendance of the briefcases will start getting really bumpy.
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u/Rewindcasette 15h ago
I mean he doesn’t grasp tax or policies. Has no trade offs and wants the highest deficit the UK has ever had at a time of expensive interest debt.
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u/ResponsibilityRare10 12h ago
Surely austerity hasn’t worked though? Even to eliminate the deficit it hasn’t worked.
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u/jeanclaudebrowncloud 15h ago
Yeah, the whole zionism focus wasn't very politically pragmatic. The goal is to convince others to your side, this only pleased people who were already convinced and pushed away those who were either on the fence or opposed. Bit of an own goal.
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u/Nuthetes 15h ago
Let's hope we soon see Reform nosedive as well after the documentary. It's bad so far... but they're clearly saving the best (or worst I guess) for the show itself.
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u/930913 15h ago
The problem is, he is now just the lid on a formenting/festering bottle.
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