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Nigel Farage has called for Zack Polanski to be arrested after he shared an Instagram post of a man wearing a t-shirt with a guillotine next to the Reform UK leader.
A Green Party spokesperson has said: "Once this image was brought to [Zack's] attention he immediately unshared the post. He unequivocally does not support this type of dangerous message."
Jon Sopel and Aasmah Mir discuss whether the Green Party is a serious party, and if there is now a return of two-party politics.
Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp
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0:00
Good afternoon, it's three minutes past two. This is Asma Mir sitting in for Sheila Fogarty
0:05
I'm here till four o'clock and then Tom Swarbrick takes over. I don't know how much attention you will have been paying to the polls recently
0:13
but there is definitely a trend and it may be reversed. Who knows? Politics is a very fickle thing, as we've learned over the last five years or so
0:20
But there has certainly been a bit of a dip in support for both Reform UK and the Green Party
0:26
so what's that down to? Do you know? What is your theory
0:31
Perhaps you are someone who has supported either of those parties and you've changed your mind
0:36
or the heat has lessened over certain issues or you like what you see in Andy Burnham
0:44
is it the Burnham bounce? Why do you think there has been a dip in support
0:48
for Reform UK in the Green Party? Again we don't know if that's going to be short-lived
0:51
or long-lived. 0345 6060 973 and would you welcome a return to two-party politics
0:59
Let me know what you think. Let's speak to John Sopel, who's co-host of Global's podcast, The News Agents
1:05
First of all, just on the polls, or one poll, but I think I'm correct in saying that there has been a recent trend in movement
1:14
What do you put that down to? Well, I think that part of it is that the Green Party and reform
1:21
have been doing astonishingly well and since they have been rising rapidly has come the scrutiny that goes with successful political
1:32
parties and asking the question well what would you look like as a government and are you behaving
1:37
like grown-up politicians and with reform and the five million pound donation to gift to Nigel Farage
1:48
there are questions that still haven't been answered about what it was for and whether it's
1:53
anyone's business or not, and whether it's in breach of parliamentary rules and whether
1:57
it should have been declared That is the scrutiny that comes with being a political leader And Zach Polanski the leader of the Greens is rightly facing scrutiny over some of the things
2:08
that he's done. And most recently, a post which was stupid and moronic and not the actions of a
2:16
political leader because it was a picture that someone else had posted on Instagram
2:21
but had been picked up and reposted by Zelensky, seemingly to show Nigel Farage next to a guillotine
2:32
and the legend from the sort of punk song of the late 70s
2:35
were making plans for Nigel, i.e. beheading him. And, you know, what is Zach Polansky doing
2:42
And, you know, they said it was an inadvertent mistake, he hadn't looked properly. Well, why don't you look properly before you start reposting stuff
2:49
You know, Donald Trump did a lot of that in America in his first term, where he reposted stuff by white supremacists and the like, would take it down two or three hours later
2:59
And he would say, oh, well, it's a mistake. I shouldn't have reposted it. But for three hours, his supporters were getting something that they probably quite liked
3:09
The difficulty here is that, well, there's two things. Number one, the leader of a political party like Henry Badenow or Andy Burnham
3:19
this would not happen. They wouldn't do that because of the level of scrutiny that is understood
3:26
and perhaps the layers of people around them. You would hope not. But the other thing is, is that whenever you misspeak or misquote or do something wrong
3:36
it's not the first thing to do, apart from not having done it in the first place, to personally apologise
3:40
And I don't think Zach Plansky's done that. There's been a Green Party statement, but not one from him
3:46
And isn't it quite a simple thing to do? So this is where you get into the territory of
3:52
did he just blunder into something and doesn't want to particularly apologise? Or was it deliberate
3:57
And you know there is past form there Following the appalling stabbings that took place in Golders Green where two Jewish guys are singled out for attack because they Jewish
4:11
Zach Polanski posts and complains about police brutality towards the suspect. So making the story about the suspect
4:20
Now that he sort of did apologise for, saying... But then he clarified the apology to say
4:26
well it wasn't about i'm not i'm not i wasn't wrong to raise the brutality i was wrong to raise
4:32
it in the way that i did and that gives the story another day another bit of momentum and i so i
4:38
think that zach polanski is old enough and big enough to make the judgment that he knows what
4:44
he is doing if he doesn't know what he's doing he needs to learn fast because you know where you
4:49
started this conversation asthma is to talk about what is happening in the polls and you're seeing a
4:54
real you know the greens shot up very quickly they're coming down fast as well and i think a
5:02
lot of that focuses on polanski and the political places he is taking the green party and whether
5:09
it's that's doing them any favors right now and there are similar questions being asked about
5:14
reform but i mean their policies haven't changed so there must be something else going on here
5:20
as well. Is it just because we are having a moment, we don't know how long it's going to last
5:26
of political stability? We don't know how long it's going to last, but you've got a much more
5:32
sure-footed Conservative Party leader in Kemi Badenock, who has been very clever in an awful
5:40
lot of the things that she has done recently and the positioning of the party. And it feels much
5:46
more recognisable as a Conservative Party, which is about law and order, it's about lower taxes
5:51
it's about welfare reform, it's about increased defence spending. And you've now got a Prime
5:55
Minister who is also very sure at the moment about what he wants to do And you seeing that maybe the two main parties don just mean political failure and letting people down And maybe there is a reassertion
6:12
And these are, look, these are two parties that have been around for a very long time
6:16
So, you know, maybe we in the media are sometimes really quick to say, oh, well, the Labour Party's dead
6:22
The Conservative Party can't come back from this defeat. It's the worst defeat in the Conservative history
6:26
They're gone. I think people who write those obituaries do them prematurely
6:32
And equally, I think those people who talk up reform, talk up the Green Party
6:39
those are parties built on shallow roots at the moment. Look, undoubtedly, reform are talking to people's concerns
6:46
Green Party are talking to people's concerns. If I was to add a word of kind of criticism and just, you know
6:52
And Zia Yusuf saying that Zach Polanski ought to be arrested for incitement for that post
7:00
I mean, it was the Reform Party that was championing Lucy Connolly and saying that she was a victim
7:05
when she talked about burning down hotels full of asylum seekers, except she didn't phrase it quite as nicely as that
7:14
You make an interesting point, John. Thank you very much for that
7:18
That's John Sopel, who is co-host of Global's podcast, The News Agents
7:22
We should just say that Green Party spokesperson said, and this is what the statement was
7:26
Zach condemns the image on the T-shirt. He was tagged in a post with 20 images
7:31
and clicked accept without realising there was more to it than he had seen
7:36
The T-shirt is clearly in poor taste, especially at a time of heightened fears for the security of public figures
7:42
having experienced multiple threats himself. He and the Green Party called on everyone involved in public discourse
7:47
to show kindness and not encourage more division. And we should add that the Met Police have said earlier today
7:56
that was on Monday actually, we received a third-party report relating to an image shared on social media
8:01
We take reports of this nature extremely seriously and officers are conducting inquiries into the matter
8:07
So that's where we stand
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