You have to hand it to him: Zack Polanski certainly knows his audience. The leader of the Green Party in England and Wales understands perfectly what makes his voters tick, and he gives it to them without restraint. Reckless anti-Israel rhetoric? Check. Cruel dismissal of women fighting for their rights against the demands of transgender activists? He is your man. And, of course, Mr Polanski is rarely heard in public without making some pronouncement or other on the fitness to lead of US President Donald Trump.
Visiting Scotland last week to campaign alongside Scottish Green co-leaders Ross Greer and Gillian Mackay, Mr Polanski delivered something of a greatest hits, covering all the appropriate revolutionary concerns. However, it was while discussing Mr Trump that he became most animated. Speaking at a press conference in Glasgow, he said it was time for the American leader's Scottish golf courses to be seized and 'brought into community ownership'. With the greatest magnanimity, Mr Polanski said it was not for him to tell Scotland what to do, but he would 'really like to see Donald Trump kicked out of his golf courses'. 'I don't think,' he intoned, 'you should be able to start illegal and unpopular wars and still have golf courses.'
This seems a peculiarly specific sanction which raises several questions: what if someone starts an 'illegal war', or even just an 'unpopular' one, and they do not have golf courses? In the absence of golf courses, what else should they not be allowed to own? No bowling alleys for demagogues? A bad man burger van ban? But the lack of detail does not matter because there is absolutely no possibility the SNP government will take any such action. For one thing, ministers have no authority to seize property belonging to people of whom they may disapprove (though if John Swinney were to bring forward a Bill changing that, I would not be surprised). For another, oh give me strength.
That Mr Polanski does not seriously think there is any chance of Mr Trump's golf courses being grabbed by the state is irrelevant. What matters to him is that he captures the mood of his supporters. And his supporters are, currently, in the mood to hear the many and varied ways in which Donald Trump might be humiliated. For as long as politics has existed, charlatans have built successful careers by saying what people want to hear. Rather than being, as his acolytes would have us believe, part of a new political breed, Mr Polanski is merely the most modern iteration of the populist, a snake oil salesman for our times.
Mr Polanski's is an entirely unserious politics, based on vibes. It is self-indulgent, lazy and dishonest. That Donald Trump is a deplorable individual is hardly a controversial point of view. Members of all our major parties have, at different times, been highly critical of the words and actions of the American President. Mr Polanski is no outsider when it comes to his disregard for the resident of the White House. Where the Green chief differs from others is in the way he expresses his opinion.
Serious politicians, navigating the world as it actually is and not as they wish it to be, must observe a bigger, ever-changing picture, one not only in which Mr Trump is currently American President but one in which he will, soon enough, cease to be. Amid the chaos caused by Mr Trump's erratic behaviour, serious politicians must manage a diplomatic relationship and military alliance between the UK and the US that has endured, to the benefit of both nations, for decades. This does not mean meekly complying with the President's demands or assuming the 'special relationship' will survive his time in office. But it does mean acting, wherever possible, with dignity and cool-headedness when it comes to the US.
Mr Polanski would have us believe those politicians currently trying to do just that are weak. He, on the other hand, with his bold idea to use the power of the state to seize the President's assets, is fearless. Mr Polanski's ridiculous suggestion that the state should take Donald Trump's golf courses from him and hand them over to local communities was self-satisfied nonsense pitched to make himself look righteous. It was not real politics; it was a pronouncement made for 'likes' from the leader of a party that has long since abandoned any pretence that its concern is the environment.
Mr Polanski – in common with his Scottish counterparts, Mr Greer and Ms Mackay – is not one to trouble himself with details (How, exactly, might the government go about seizing Donald Trump's golf courses? What legislation might it use? Who would decide which members of the community benefited and to what extent?). Instead, his politics is performance. Mr Polanski is no political thinker. Rather, he is a sloganeer with pithy lines on the key 'progressive' issues of the day: trans activism, Gaza and Donald Trump. Let him loose on a dinner party in Hyndland or Stockbridge and he would be a wow, I am sure. But, in power, he would be a liability.
Fortunately, Mr Polanski, with his fantasy politics, is far from office. Unfortunately, John Swinney, who shares the Green leader's propensity to ignore reality, is very much in power. Campaigning on Monday, Mr Swinney showed that Mr Polanski has nothing on him when it comes to saying what is easy rather than what is true. In the SNP leader's case, the flight of fancy in question involved the matter of independence, which he would very much like his supporters to believe he is on the brink of delivering.
Of course, before Mr Swinney can lead Scots to a bright new independent future, he must first lead the Yes campaign to victory in a referendum. Since defeat in the 2014 vote, the SNP has repeatedly, monomaniacally, demanded the UK Government grant it the power to hold Indyref2. Frustrated by the refusal of any of a series of Prime Ministers to budge on the matter, former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon took it to the Supreme Court, which ruled in November 2022 that the authority to stage another plebiscite lay in Westminster. In order for Indyref2 to take place, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer would have to – as David Cameron did – agree a Section 30 Order under the Scotland Act. This would transfer to Holyrood the power to hold a second vote on the constitution.
All of that was mere small print to Mr Swinney on Monday when he said that, in the event of an SNP majority in May 7's election, he would act 'to approve the development of a Section 30 Order'. This was nonsense. Mr Swinney can approve the development of whatever he likes, but he is not getting that green light for another referendum and he knows it. A Section 30 is not in his gift. Men like Zack Polanski and John Swinney style themselves as great, crusading leaders but, behind their bold claims, they are just two chancers, making it up as they go along.
