Zack Polanski wants to run the country? Here's why he couldn't even run a tea stall

Future historians should study Zack Polanski keenly. He’s the sort of paradox which shows you everything wrong with the modern left. Higher taxes for thee, but not for me, appears to be one of his guiding principles. For three years, the Green Party leader lived aboard a houseboat – and somehow forgot to pay a penny of council tax. His party wants to tax second homes into oblivion; the Scottish Greens have even proposed a council tax that ratchets up with every additional property owned. And yet here is Polanski, who couldn’t stop telling everyone how “amazing” his floating home was, treating the rules as something for others to bother with.

His first defence was that the boat wasn’t his main home, so the rules didn’t apply. That story sank fast when it turned out his voter registration was tied to a building next to the marina. He enjoyed all the perks of belonging to the area without chipping in a penny towards it.

Of course, we’ve seen this saga before. Angela Rayner spent months lecturing us about wealth and fairness while dodging her own stamp duty. Now we’re witnessing a similar irony of a man who wants billionaires milked dry while ducking council tax on his own houseboat.

This is hardly the first time Polanski’s CV has collapsed under scrutiny. He claimed he’d worked at the Ministry of Justice on “training and diversity programmes”. His actual role was with an outside agency hiring actors to play out mock courtroom scenes for trainee judges. Whitehall to dressing-up box is quite the slide.

Then there’s his life as Britain’s only ex-breast enhancer – a hypnotherapist who reckoned he could grow a reporter’s bust through the power of suggestion. Add his disputed stint as a “Red Cross spokesman” and Polanski’s truth keeps veering further and further from the truth.

This isn’t to tell off Mr Polanski. It’s to warn of the dangers of Trojan horse politics. A man this slippery has no principled core to push back against the worst people in his coalition. And unfortunately, in his party, malicious forces have found a useful receptacle of chaos, economic illiteracy and blatant antisemitism.

That this man could tip the balance of power at the next election should fill everyone with dread. It’s one thing to be a pressure group outflanking Labour on the progressive fringe. It’s quite another thing entirely to legitimise and embolden a cancerous threat to our fragile society.

Apparently, a party stuffed with progressive zealots and Islamist sympathisers can’t be antisemitic because their leader never fails to remind us he’s gay and Jewish. As if personal identity were a forcefield that deflects criticism. It isn’t. A man can be Jewish and still run a party where Jew hatred is laundered through the language of anti-Zionism.

A man can be gay and still sit down for interviews with Islamist outlets that platform homophobic fascists. Polanski has pulled off both. Under Polanski, the Greens are a bull in a China shop. Antisemitism is ushered in as “anti-Israel” – except when two Jewish men are stabbed in Golders Green.

That Polanski showed more sympathy for the alleged attacker than the brave policemen who stopped him is telling. His party’s disciplinary machine only creaks into life when the press does the heavy lifting.

Saiqa Ali, who allegedly said Trump is “owned by Jews” and that England has a government “overrepresented with Zionist Jews”, was suspended only after being arrest – yet still won her Lambeth seat. Ifhat Shaheen, who excused October 7 as Palestinian “self-defence”, wasn’t even suspended and is now a Green councillor.

Even deputy leader Mothin Ali has reportedly coached suspended candidates on how to keep campaigning. I hate to say it, but there’s not much that bonds us together. Flying the flag is now apparently racist. Requiring immigrants to speak English is bigotry. Christian holidays are renamed and tiptoed around for fear of causing offence. Even inquiring about someone’s ethnic origins is akin to a hate crime.

Into this fragile mess walks Zack Polanski, peddling grievance dressed up as environmentalism. In wards last week where at least one in 10 voters were Muslim, Green support leapt by 14 points; where Muslim voters were thin on the ground, it hardly budged.

Whatever that is, environmentalism isn’t really the word for it. Polanski is a chancer — and he may also be the future of British politics. God help us all if that’s true.