Nigel Farage's raging hypocrisy over Zack Polanski
Consider what Farage has said - and what he has defended
Nigel Farage and Reform are exposing themselves as massive, raging hypocrites - again - this time over the furore surrounding Zack Polanski briefly accepting a collaboration post on Instagram.
Farage is desperately trying to distract you from the undeclared £5 million personal gift from a Thailand-based crypto donor, and from donations linked to the convicted fraudster George Cottrell. Indeed, the latest Guardian headline about Cottrell has just dropped:
So Farage is playing a very obvious game: look over there!
Here’s the TL;DR of what actually happened
Zack Polanski, the leader of the Green Party, briefly accepted a collaboration request on Instagram.
For those unfamiliar with the feature, someone can tag you as a collaborator on their post. If you accept, the post also appears on your own grid.
This particular post was a carousel containing several photographs. All but one were innocuous campaign-style pictures. The first showed Polanski at an event called Green Space in Bristol.
Anyone who has looked at Polanski’s Instagram account knows that he accepts collaboration requests en masse. I don’t think that is a good idea - not least because it leaves you vulnerable to exactly this sort of thing - but I’ll come back to that.
Several photographs into the carousel, there was an image of someone wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “We’re Only Making Plans for Nigel”, alongside a man operating a French Revolution-style guillotine.
The words are a reference to Making Plans for Nigel, the song released by the English rock band XTC in 1979, which has often been linked to Farage for obvious reasons.
When Polanski became aware of the image, he immediately removed himself from the collaboration and said accepting it had been a mistake.
But all hell broke loose.
Former Reform chair Zia Yusuf tweeted:
No. Zack Polanski did not “post” the photograph. He accepted a collaboration containing a series of images, the first of which was an entirely ordinary photograph of him speaking at an event. When he noticed the offending image several slides in, he removed himself.
Nor does the photograph actually call for Farage’s beheading. It does not make any demand at all. It is obviously crude satire. There is no shortage of jokes involving Madame Guillotine in British political culture. Let’s be serious here.
Yusuf went on:
This bloke needs to seriously calm down. He is always so hysterical. It is completely one-note. At least Donald Trump occasionally intersperses the derangement with some levity.
And, again, it is a lie. Polanski did not post a threat to kill anyone.
Yusuf then declared:
Demanding that the leader of another political party be arrested over an Instagram collaboration request he accepted by mistake is not a serious response. It is unhinged.
Farage then posted a video with the caption:
He went on Sky News demanding that the Metropolitan Police take action.
Again, let’s spell out what we are talking about: Polanski accepted a collaboration containing a series of photographs. The first showed him speaking at an event. Several photographs later came an image of someone wearing a very edgy satirical T-shirt. When Polanski realised, he removed himself from the post.
That is the basis on which Farage and his outriders are demanding consequences - and, in Yusuf’s case, police custody.
The hypocrisy is staggering
This is the same Nigel Farage who said in May 2017:
“If they don’t deliver this Brexit that I spent 25 years of my life working for, then I will be forced to don khaki, pick up a rifle and head for the front lines.”
This was less than a year after the Labour MP Jo Cox was shot and stabbed to death during the referendum campaign.
This is the same Farage who said Reform would “take the knife” to the civil service.
The same Farage who called for “pure, cold rage” after the conviction of the murderer of Henry Nowak, with riots taking place just hours later.
But more to the point, Farage and Reform came to the defence of Lucy Connolly, a childminder jailed after the nationwide riots and pogroms of August 2024, portraying her as a free-speech martyr.
After the horrific Southport murders - committed, to be absolutely clear, by a British-born British citizen - Connolly tweeted:
The “bastards” she was referring to were asylum seekers.
And during the riots, people really did attempt to set fire to hotels containing asylum seekers. The country was in the grip of a violent, fascist uprising.
Farage nevertheless declared:
“I want to make it absolutely clear: Lucy Connolly should not be in prison.”
“While she should not have said what she said, understand there were millions of mothers at that moment in time after Southport feeling exactly the same way.”
Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader, visited Connolly in person and called her a “political prisoner”.
When she was released, Farage tweeted:
He even took her case to the United States.
Connolly was then platformed on the main stage of Reform’s September 2025 conference, introduced as “Britain’s favourite political prisoner” and publicly embraced by Farage himself.
So let’s get this straight.
A woman explicitly called for hotels containing asylum seekers to be set on fire not long before violent mobs went on to do exactly that. Farage and Reform turned her into a martyr, defended her, visited her in prison, took her case overseas and gave her a starring role at their party conference.
But Zack Polanski accidentally accepts an Instagram collaboration containing a crude piece of satire several photographs in - and Farage demands that he “face the consequences”, while Yusuf calls for him to be taken into police custody.
This is not a principled stand against violent rhetoric. It is a desperate attempt by Farage to distract from his own scandals - one which has instead exposed the grotesque hypocrisy of him and his party.
Indeed, the Metropolitan police have declared that no action will be taken against Polanski because the threshold for criminal action hasn’t been met.
Polanski should change his social-media strategy
I do think Zack Polanski should alter his relationship with social media - and I say that as someone who is terminally online.
As a leader, constantly reposting other people’s material drowns out your own message. It also leaves you vulnerable to bad-faith attacks and accidental shares of material you have not properly checked.
Look at Zohran Mamdani’s social media. It is very disciplined. He posts sparingly and sticks closely to the key messages he wants to communicate at any given moment.
Polanski would benefit from taking the same approach.
But that does not change the absurdity of this attack. Nor should anyone allow Farage’s theatrical outrage to obscure the obvious reason he is promoting it.
He wants you looking anywhere but at him.
WHAT!? Nigel Farage a hypocrite? I’m aghast!
Racist Nigel farage has done so much harm to so many people in Britain including immigrants and dodgy people farage have committed so many financial crimes by selling his service to billionaires who are dodgy themselves like Christopher harborne who have bought so many politicians including prime ministers Boris Johnson and others by them millions to destroy British economy by asking those corrupt politicians to take Britain out of Europe and he also gave one million pounds to dodgy criminal Boris Johnson who is another most corrupt criminal politicians to tell the fanatical Jew who is the Ukrainian president not to sign peace deal with Russia and criminal Boris Johnson made how many million from other military industrial complex owners no one knows how much because Britain is controlled by Zionist Jews that's why Boris Johnson not investigated yet