Polanski’s Win Triggers a Media Panic – As All The Old Smears Collapse

Right, so the Green Party has done something Westminster swore would never happen after what they did to Corbyn: it elected a leader who actually answers questions, a deputy who has lived through the racism Britain pretends it’s cured but is actually making so much worse, and another who can govern without selling her soul. Within days the knives were out. Old tabloid stings were reheated like last week’s takeaway, the Daily Mail was obsessing over Zack Polanski’s teeth, and Mothin Ali was subjected to racist abuse so vile it made Farage’s pub rants look quaint, he of course and hiis divisiveness driving much of it. Rachel Millward, meanwhile, was treated as the “sensible” one - proof that in Britain respectability still comes wrapped in white, middle-class packaging. The politics though? Well, that’s been ignored because there’s no attacking that is there? Because if the media actually debated what this trio, the new Green Party leadership team stands for - redistribution, climate justice, and solidarity with the oppressed - then the real panic would set in wouldn’t it?
Right, so last week Zack Polanski was declared the new leader of the Green Party of England and Wales. The margin was nuts though: 84.6% of the vote, more than twenty thousand members backing him against fewer than four thousand for his rivals Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns. It was one of the most decisive leadership mandates in British political history. This had nothing to do with entryism, in fact if you took every member who has joined since Zack announced his intention to stand out of the equation, he still slammed it. The party did not just make a choice of personalities, though I have to say, that clearly came through because Zack is so personable; it issued a thunderous statement of intent with it and even though I was away on a week’s break last week, as a Green myself it was party time.
However the Greens have often been caricatured as a minor party of polite environmentalism, a safety valve for middle-class conscience is often how they have historically been viewed. That image was shattered with Polanski’s victory. A working class lad from Salford now leads it. Members made clear that they wanted a leader willing to fight. They wanted someone who would connect climate collapse to rents, wages, and the NHS, because they are all connected. They wanted someone who would not bow to Labour or the Conservatives, but who would confront both head-on with eco-populist clarity.
This change was underscored by the election of the deputies in the same contest. Mothin Ali, a Leeds councillor from a working-class Muslim background, and Rachel Millward, a Wealden councillor with experience in coalition government, were chosen as co-deputies. Together the leadership team embodied a diversity we’ve never seen before: a Jewish leader, a Muslim deputy, and a white woman deputy, all united in intent for meaningful change. They look like modern Britain does and in a way that Westminster still by and large doesn’t.
The effect was immediate and predictable though. The establishment panicked. It’s bad enough Jeremy Corbyn has returned with a new party waiting in the wings alongside Zarah Sultana, but now the Greens have gone down the same road. Therefore the smears began before the new leader had even had time to lay out his first programme. Old tabloid stings were exhumed to paint Polanski as ridiculous. Quentin Letts in the Daily Fail sneered at his teeth and career history, comparing him to Hannibal Lecter. Ali was subjected to vile racist abuse while on a family holiday in Norfolk. Millward, by contrast though, was gently framed as the “sensible” one — proof that whiteness and middle-classness still confer respectability by default, the tacit racist undertones of establishment media narratives I felt.
The question that matters throughout all of this is why. Why did Polanski win so decisively? How does this new team change the trajectory of the Greens? Why has the response from the press been so personal, so racially charged, so absurdly trivial? What lessons are being drawn from the Corbyn era from before, and what makes this moment different? And above all, why does the establishment seem so rattled by it?
Well the answer is actually very simple: the Green Party is now finally a threat.
Polanski’s victory did not come from nowhere. He had prepared the ground for months. He launched his campaign early, and by June had already dominated debates within the party. Bright Green noted that his campaign was characterised by relentless media appearances, from TikToks to podcasts to national television. He refused to hide in safe spaces. He confronted hostile interviewers and, crucially, always pivoted back to everyday concerns.
Other media outlets have described his platform bluntly: redistribution of wealth, public ownership of energy, climate justice as social justice. Polanski has called Keir Starmer a “cynical, disappointing sell-out” and few of us would disagree. These were not throwaway insults. They were strategic markers: the Greens would no longer act as Labour’s conscience but as its challenger. Polanski has made that clear too – he’s told Starmer, we’re coming to replace you and after Starmer showed the left the door, who would argue that support is not there?
Polanski’s first days as leader, the last week, has showed the same instincts. He conducted sixty-one interviews in forty-eight hours. He launched his own podcast, Bold Politics, which soared to number four in the UK news charts. He travelled to Clacton, Nigel Farage’s constituency, and did what Farage himself rarely does: talk to local people, especially while Farage wasn’t even in the country he was getting his backside handed to him in the US by Jamie Raskin who called him a “Putin-loving free speech imposter and Trump sycophant,” so if the US can get the measure of this guy, why can’t we? Ah, the media. But in Clacton, Polanski asked people there whether they knew Reform UK supported zero-hours contracts and fire-and-rehire. Many did not. When told, some said they would reconsider their vote.
This was populism deployed against the populists. It was not just symbolic theatre. It was an attack at the heart of Farage’s claim to represent ordinary people. And it showed the Greens could seize ground Labour had abandoned and do so in the simplest of ways – actually talking to ordinary people.
The launch of Bold Politics was more than a gimmick too. Its first episode featured Ash Sarkar, discussing the lessons of the Corbyn era, the legacy of empire, and the power of protest. It was radical but conversational, free of the sound-bite straitjacket that dominates broadcast news. Within days, listeners had given it a perfect rating.
Why do this though? Mainstream outlets would never give the Greens a fair platform, they never have, they wilfully ignore them in favour of Farage or Tice. They would caricature and sneer and distort instead, much more fun for these silver-spoon types. So Polanski built his own space. This was a lesson absorbed from Corbyn’s downfall. Corbyn had relied on rallies and membership surges but was at the mercy of newspapers and broadcasters that despised him. Polanski is not making the same mistake. He is creating channels the press cannot filter.
And the strategy is already working. By building recognition through his own podcast and social feeds, Polanski ensures that when tabloids attack him, many voters have already heard his voice directly and those same tabloids, those same mainstream media outlets, will come under more pressure by more people to ask why they aren’t having him on, or Mothin Ali or Rachel Millward. The smears bounce differently when the target is already a familiar speaker.
If Polanski is the eco-populist spearhead though and not to denigrate his own working-class roots in any way, Mothin Ali is the working-class anchor, the flat cap, the Yorkshire brogue and like Corbyn, knows his way around an allotment. His story is well known in Leeds. In 2024, when unrest flared in Harehills, his patch, he did not hide. He put himself between angry crowds and riot police, forming a human shield to stop violence. Some outlets smeared him as a rioter at the time, racist as that obviously was when it couldn’t be further from the truth, but in reality he was acting to preserve peace and people including myself do not call him the Hero of Harehills for nothing. I have nothing but the utmost respect not only for his politics but for his courage.
Ali speaks plainly. In an interview with the New Statesman last month he said: “There’s a lot of racism on the left.” It was not a provocation but a description of his own lived experience. Even progressive parties, he argued, marginalise Muslim voices. In his campaign for deputy leader, profiled by Novara Media, he said the Greens must break out of their middle-class image and become a party for the working class.
When elected, he became the only Muslim deputy leader of a major British party. That milestone was met not with celebration in the national press but with vitriol. On a family holiday to Cromer, strangers hurled racist slurs, threw bottles, and exposed themselves in front of his children. Ali filmed the incident and responded with calm dignity, saying Britain should be an “island of belonging.”
The abuse Ali faced is disgusting, but it is also revealing. He is being attacked not for what he has done but for who he is. His politics — tackling poverty, housing, and climate from a working-class perspective, a socialist within the Green Party as he is, exactly like me — are popular, but unlike me he isn’t white and therein lies the problem for small minded media outlets and even smaller minded people who pay them heed. So opponents resort to vilification of identity. It is the same playbook used against every radical threat: if you cannot beat the ideas, try to break the person.
Rachel Millward has been treated completely differently. As a white, middle-class councillor, she is framed as the “sensible” balance to Polanski and Ali, she is what the Greens should be in the establishment’s eyes. Her experience in Wealden, leading coalitions in local government, is presented as proof of respectability as well.
But again, the framing is deceptive. Millward is not a centrist counterweight, despite said optics. She is a committed leftist, aligned with her colleagues on redistribution and climate justice. Her value is not in moderating them but in demonstrating that radical politics can also govern. She reassures without diluting the message and that’s a message the media would like to bury.
The contrast in coverage is telling. Polanski is mocked, Ali is vilified, Millward is indulged. The politics of all three though, are completely aligned. The difference is identity. Whiteness and middle-classness are treated as legitimacy; Jewish anti-Zionism and Muslim working-class roots are treated as suspect. This hierarchy is not about policy. It is about prejudice.
The attacks launched against this leadership team have been strikingly shallow.
Polanski’s past as a hypnotherapist was dredged up again, a pathetic decade-old tabloid sting from the very worst of hate rages, the Murdoch Scum. Quentin Letts sneered at his teeth, writing they looked like “Hannibal Lecter.” When Letts himself looks like Harry Potter got locked up under the stairs until he was 50. None of this had anything to do with politics. It was character assassination dressed up as commentary.
Ali’s treatment was worse. Beyond the Cromer abuse, he has been falsely painted as a rioter, and his remarks on Gaza weaponised against him. He apologised for any offence caused, but the purpose of the attacks was never sincere debate. It was to create a caricature: the dangerous Muslim politician who must be contained. It’ll be interesting to see how that gets squared now Starmer has shuffled a Muslim into the post of Home Secretary now, so look out for the double standards.
Millward, by contrast, was allowed to pass unscathed. The establishment did not fear her identity in the same way. But the indulgence is also a trap, attempting to pit her as the “reasonable” deputy against her “radical” colleagues.
It’s a familiar pattern. When radical policies are popular, opponents cannot challenge them head-on. Who would openly argue for poverty wages, collapsing hospitals, or endless war? Instead they aim at the messengers. Mock the teeth, smear the Muslim, patronise the woman. The politics remain untouched.
The echoes of Jeremy Corbyn’s rise and fall are loud. Corbyn was smeared as antisemitic, unpatriotic, incompetent. His policies — public ownership, wealth taxes, peace in foreign policy — were never the real issue. They polled well. The threat was that they might be implemented. So the man had to be destroyed and here we go again.
Polanski and his deputies are learning those lessons though. They know smears are inevitable. They know the press will not play fair. They know radical policies must be tied to everyday survival, not presented as abstract promises. And they know that movements cannot rely solely on parliamentary politics but must build power outside as well.
There are also differences. Corbyn led a divided party, with MPs openly sabotaging him. Polanski leads a united party whose members gave him an overwhelming mandate. Corbyn was vulnerable to accusations of antisemitism. Polanski, as a Jewish leader, complicates that smear. Pro-Israel lobbyists may denounce him as “self-hating,” but the old playbook does not fit as neatly anymore.
The establishment will always seek to crush radical movements, not by debating ideas but by destroying reputations. They can’t beat the ideas. If the Greens are to survive and actually thrive and take on Starmer and replace Labour as Polanski has called for, they must be ruthless in exposing these tactics as distractions, and relentless in turning conversations back to what matters: bills, jobs, housing, Gaza, and climate collapse and Polanski is an absolute master of doing that in interviews which is why they stand out.
The establishment is not panicking because Polanski was once a hypnotherapist. It is not panicking because Ali is Muslim. It is panicking because together, this leadership team threatens to rip open the political consensus.
The Financial Times has already warned that if the Greens consolidate ten per cent of the national vote, Labour’s majority crumbles. The Greens can target seats in Bristol, Brighton, and beyond, they came second in 37 seats nationwide at the last election. They can pull disillusioned Labour voters. They can puncture Reform by exposing Farage’s hypocrisy on tax and an awful lot more. When Polanski demanded Farage resign over his own tax arrangements — far murkier than those that brought down Angela Rayner — he said what Labour would not.
Ali’s presence expands the party into working-class and minority communities long ignored by Labour. Taken for granted. His calm defiance in the face of racist abuse makes him a symbol as well as a politician. Millward reassures rural and suburban voters that the Greens are not a fringe protest but a credible governing force.
This is why the smears are so vicious already. When the Daily Fail ridicules Polanski’s teeth, it is fear in print. When strangers scream slurs at Ali, it is fear spilling into the streets. When commentators call Millward the “sensible” one, it is fear trying to divide.
The establishment cannot admit that people might want redistribution, public ownership, and peace. So it hides its fear in sneers. But the panic is plain to see.
The Greens’ new leadership has arrived with a bang, and the establishment has responded with bile. Polanski, Ali, and Millward represent something that Britain has not seen in decades: a united, radical, diverse leadership willing to confront Labour, challenge Reform, and speak directly to working people. Their mandate is overwhelming, their message clear, their strategy sharp.
The smears are not evidence of weakness. They are evidence of strength. The abuse is proof of fear. The ridicule is confirmation of threat. Britain’s elite knows that if the Greens survive the smear machine, where they brought down Corbyn before, they could become the first genuine left-populist force of the twenty-first century.
The open question is whether they can. Can they withstand the torrent of personal attacks? Can they keep their focus on bills, wages, and hospitals? Can they translate a landslide within the party into breakthroughs at the ballot box?
The answer is not yet written. But one thing is certain. The Greens’ new leadership has already changed the game. And the louder the panic grows concerning them, the clearer it becomes: they matter because the media is terrified of them.
For more on the media attacks on Mothin Ali, already loud months before this result, check out this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch to find out a bit more about him and his experiences.
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