I was rooting for the Green Plumber. Weren’t you?

A  long time ago a colleague in Hampstead Labour Party reported this response from his doorstep canvassing: “I’m not voting Labour, because I can’t stand that Tony Benn. He’s so extreme. Mind you, I agree with a lot of the things he says.”

That’s how I feel about Zack.* 

I’ve been following him on X (ex-Twitter.) He’s one of the few left wing tweeters who hasn’t blocked me. 

Blocking usually happens when my favourite radical influencers are listing the miseries of the world and the dangers we’re facing: genocide, racism, world war, destruction by runaway AI, incompetent & psychotic leaders, financial collapse, extinction due to climate change, etc., and I politely point out the Odd Man Out in their list. I’ve been blocked by Jonathan Cook, who risked his life reporting from Palestine for years; a bloke called @ireallyhateyou whom I really liked; and even Stats for Lefties. They know they’re being lied to by Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, Zelensky, the Democrats, the FBI, CIA and WEF, yet they still trust Michael Mann and John Kerry. What’s wrong with them? 

Most of Zack Polanski’s tweets are about poverty and inequality, and I’ve been commenting frequently, congratulating him on concentrating on real life problems and not the imaginary danger of climate catastrophe. It seems to me obvious that redistribution of wealth should the principal, possibly the only, subject of concern for a leftwing party. (To this end, its leaders should be economically competent people with ideas about how to achieve this, i.e. not Starmer, not Corbyn, and not Polanski. But still, at least he’s saying the right things.) 

(Redistribution should also be of concern to rightwing parties of course, if they want to survive. Covid, Trump, and the Epstein affair have combined to provoke a hatred of the billionaire class which I would never have believed possible a few years ago.)  

I’m obviously not the only person who’s noticed that Zack has been straying from the true green path. In this interview with George Monbiot :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xx6lNFx8tI

He even opens the discussion with a mea culpa:

“Why don’t you talk about the environment any more Zack? Why are you always talking about social justice issues?” Well, here we go. With the writer, journalist activist general troublemaker, the phenomenal Geoge Monbiot.

Zack addresses his illustrious guest with all the deference due to the elder statesman of climate doom – not as a fellow activist, but as a National Treasure, a kind of David Attenborough without Atters’ youthful enthusiasm. And Monbiot returns the compliment, treating Zack as a beloved disciple, fit to carry on his great work.   

Monbiot hardly touches the climate, as if he and Zack were both aware that the subject is no longer the vote winner it used to be. Instead, he sticks to the more general subject of environmental collapse. To Zack’s question on his hope for the future he replies:

Along the lines of the current process I have no hope at all. There is no hope in that process, and it’s designed to prevent hope from materialising. But in the extraordinary creativity & mobilisation of the world’s people, well I have tremendous hope there. Because every time  in the past when I’ve gone: “Oh! that’s it! We’re doomed! Nothing, nothing is going to save us now!”  Someone, somewhere proves me wrong. It might be a 15 year old schoolgirl sitting outside the Swedish parliament. It might be a new leader of the Green Party in the UK. It might be a new mayor elect of New York. You know, people come from often very unexpected places and just smash the status quo apart.

And having expressed this faith in his interviewer, he then turns his ire, not on the deniers and fossil fuel merchants, but on those on the own side who don’t share his optimism: 

There is a sub movement of people in the West of people saying: We might as well give up. Let’s walk away. There’s a whole bunch of sort of rage critters who are just : “Oh! It’s all a waste of time, we’ll just walk away, we’ll preside over the ruins one way or another. Let’s look at what happens with ‘collapses’ and let’s make the best of collapse.” 

Well, (a) they’ve absolutely no right to speak on any one else’s behalf, to say “on behalf of the world’s people, we give up,” particularly if you’re in the rich nations like ours. Where us giving up means imposing horrendous impacts on other countries. You know, it’s not up to us. We can’t unilaterally decide that we’re going to walk away from this. We’re all enmeshed in it. And of course there is no”away” to walk to. There’s no place on earth that is not going to be affected by climate breakdown or by ecological breakdown in general. Also, we don’t know which particular increment of harm will push us past a tipping point.

That’s point (a). You’ll note George’s insistence that the doomers have no right to speak on anyone else’s behalf. Unlike George, who was (and possibly still is) the appointed honorary president of the Climate Action Network, an organisation that boasted eight million supporters, if you count all the members of the National Trust, the Women’s Institute, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, etc., and if you double- and triple-count them, as one might count degrees of heat reflected off the airport tarmac, or molecules of methane in a cow’s fart.  

He never got to point (b) but instead trailed off into erudite burblings about complex systems & hysteresis.

There’s also an attack on Bill Gates, who finances the Guardian, George’s employer, to the tune of a few million, and on billionaires in general, particularly the ten richest, “..whose increase in their wealth last year could resolve world poverty 10 times over.”

I’m not sure how that would work. If they all sold the shares that correspond to their increased earnings last year, the world economy would collapse, wouldn’t it? 

Perhaps they’d better keep their loot after all. Practically the only things we still make in the West that the Chinese don’t are hand-tooled superyachts, and if there weren’t the Bill Gateses to buy them, where would we be?

The $645 million, 390-ft. BREAKTHROUGH gigayacht was commissioned by Bill Gates and is the world’s first hydrogen powered superyacht. With 14 balconies, 7 swim platforms, an underwater and 27-foot wide infinity pool, the yacht runs on liquid hydrogen and its only emission is water.

https://fortune.com/2025/07/31/bill-gates-645-million-superyacht-hydrogen-engineering/

 A 130-yard long floating apartment block with an underwater infinity pool running on hydrogen must have a lot of pipes. Lots of well paid jobs for plumbers there.   

[*For non-Brits, Zack Polanski, né Poulton, is the leader of the British Green Party, which has just scored a surprise win over the ruling Labour Party in a by-election.]

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21 Comments

  1. Most amusing – thank you, Geoff.

    I’m not sure what’s happened to the Green Party, nor why it suddenly seems to be becoming popular. I struggle to believe it’s down to Zack Polanski. If it is, I worry for the sanity of a large section of the British public. I used to be pleased about the possible collapse of the two-party system in the UK, given the mess Labour and Tories have made of things. Each performs badly and lets the voters down, so traditionally the last lot that did that has been returned to power, before they mess up again, and the last lot to mess up is duly returned to power again. And so on, ad infinitum…..until now. But now, it’s nutters to the right of me, nutters to the left of me. I’m starting to be seriously worried about the future – not because of any imaginary climate crisis, but because of a very real political crisis facing British democracy.

    Can someone please enable the SDP to come up with a strategy that will persuade the MSM to stop ignoring them and get their policies in front of the UK electorate, then perhaps the electorate will have someone they can safely vote for. At this stage I have no idea how I’m going to vote at the next UK general election.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. I think what Polanski has done for the Green Party is what Ken Livingstone did for Labour, i.e. make it seem more human and likeable. (It’s also, dare I say it, what Trump did for the Republicans, at least at first.)

    My favourite Ken Livingstone moment was when he was interrogated on BBC radio about spending at the Greater London Council. “Isn’t there a lot of spending on unnecessary things?” he was asked.”

    “No. Most of the money goes on roads, street lighting, sewers, things like that.”

    “But, don’t you finance a lot of frivolous projects?”

    “What, you mean like hostels for ethnic lesbian single parent families? No, we don’t spend much on that. Mind you, with the money we’ve got, we could have one on the corner of every street if we wanted.”

    I look forward to seeing more of Zack. The only danger I can see is that if he ever got into power, he might make Ed Miliband look sane in comparison.

    Liked by 2 people

  3. I have no time for Tommy Robinson or for Zack Polanski. I think both would be extremely dangerous if they ever got near power. What I would like to know is why does the BBC always follow the words “Tommy Robinson” with “whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon”, yet they never say “Zack Polanski, whose real name is David Paulden”?

    I have no problem with both men having decided to change their names. But why does the BBC seem to think its vital that we know that the former did while it’s a matter of indifference that the latter did?

    Liked by 3 people

  6. Regarding rage critters, they do conjure a charming image – like frustrated old cats perhaps – but their less charming brethren are the rage quitters. These are losers who lose so hard they quit. This happens a lot in online games, when one meets a player who is better than oneself. I think the anger is largely self-directed, but has an external expression. Sometimes keyboards are smashed, etc.

    Personally, I no longer play online games, but I can happily report that losing hard never made me angry. Except there was this one time…

    Zack seems to be in favour of legalising drugs. Funnily enough, I was in the same camp about 30 years ago, until I thought things through.

    The controversy at the moment seems to be about whether the (illegal) family voting happened or not, and whether a progressive party like the Greens were all in favour of it if it did.

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  7. Thanks Ray & Jit for the corrections. I don’t actually speak English that often, having lived in France for 43 years, and it’s beginning to show.

    I got into a discussion about family voting beginning here

    https://x.com/gmchambers/status/2027155924331204714

    under a comment by Sam Coates of SkyNews. Jaime Jessop & Barry Woods joined in.

    Both Farage and some Labour person have claimed they lost votes because of family voting. The suggestion seems to be that Pakistani patriarchs have been forcing their enslaved womenfolk to vote for a party led by a gay Jew, against there natural inclination to vote either for a party that wants to reduce child benefits, or for one that wants them out of the country.

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  8. Geoff – thanks for an interesting post. From that superyachts link, a few quotes –

    “The $645 million, 390-foot “Breakthrough” superyacht—widely linked to billionaire Bill Gates but reportedly never used by him—is up for sale.”

    ““Breakthrough—true to its name—is a genuine breakthrough and milestone in innovation,” said Paartalu, who heads up what can be compared to the Zillow for yachts. “It’s the only privately owned vessel powered by hydrogen, and building one demands extreme precision, as any hydrogen leak could be catastrophic.””

    “What’s also interesting about the sale of “Breakthrough” is Gates reportedly never even stepped foot on the yacht, even though it’s up for sale and will be shown at the Monaco Yacht Show in September.”

    Rich boys with toys. I’m thinking of a bid of £200 to turn it into a Airbnb anchored in Douglas bay.

    PS – after having the hydrogen bit ripped out.

    Liked by 1 person

  9. As for the Greens winning, not unexpected. seems we have a new tussle for the top.

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  10. It does seem rather unlikely that the yacht is powered by “liquid” hydrogen. The physical properties of hydrogen probably preclude that. Who would want a hydrogen-powered mega-yacht? Its operational emissions would be trivial compared to those created during construction.

    Geoff, it may seem odd, but the theory propounded by the Telegraph is that the Greens had two entirely different sets of election messages, which they deployed judiciously. One set probably included the policies of legalising drugs and prostitution, the other probably not. Certainly they would have to set out a full manifesto prior to a general election, so it would be harder to thread that needle.

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  11. Because every time  in the past when I’ve gone: “Oh! that’s it! We’re doomed! Nothing, nothing is going to save us now!”  Someone, somewhere proves me wrong. It might be a 15 year old schoolgirl sitting outside the Swedish parliament. It might be a new leader of the Green Party in the UK. It might be a new mayor elect of New York.

    Er, no mate, that ‘someone, somewhere’ would be the refusal of polar ice to melt and the inexplicable reluctance of sea levels around the globe to alarmingly accelerate towards Biblical Deluge next Friday, preferring instead to metronomically and predictably tick along at a (non accelerating) rate of a couple of mm per year. That ‘someone’ is the irritating face of any one of thousands of bespectacled, nerdy climate sceptics suffering from Dunning-Kruger (aka Big Oil funded climate deniers) saying ‘We told you so’.

    Liked by 3 people

  12. Geoff,

    Both Farage and some Labour person have claimed they lost votes because of family voting. The suggestion seems to be that Pakistani patriarchs have been forcing their enslaved womenfolk to vote for a party led by a gay Jew.

    You left out the ‘vote for a party whose deputy leader is terrorist supporting radical Islamist Mothin Ali who celebrated the Oct 7 attacks’ bit.

    So, I have to ask, is the gay Jewish vegan the Green puppet or is it the radical Muslim anti-Semite? What swung it for the Greens in Gorton and Denton? Was it the gay Jewish bloc vote or the Muslim bloc vote (assured through illegal ‘family voting’ practices)?

    Liked by 2 people

  15. Jit

     “the theory propounded by the Telegraph is that the Greens had two entirely different sets of election messages..”

    ..and apparently neither set had anything about climate change. This could be immensely significant. If the Greens manage to turn themselves into a serious political force, there’s no way they’d sacrifice their new found popularity for mere science. Nor could I imagine them committing electoral suicide to please the druggies and prostitutes.

    But what do I know? I’ve been defending Trump for 9 years, despite his ignorance, vulgarity & general unsuitability, in the hope that he’d rein in the US war machine. I think I’ll shut up about politics.

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  16. df hunter

    I added the reference to Gates’s yacht because it typifies the idiocy of the billionaire class, and it reminded me of something I read in the Thatcher (or Blair?) years, when the British shipyards were closing & the journalist consoled his readers wit the fact that, if we no longer made merchant ships, we still made luxury yachts. And have you seen the thing? It’s just a mini cruise ship, the symbol of all that is most naff in the life of the masses. And have you seen photos of Epstein’s island? Shingle & a few windswept palm trees, with another, bigger island facing it. It reminds me of the view from the beach in Portsmouth looking over at Gosport where we were forced to go swimming in March in PE lessons. The rich are so sad.

    Liked by 1 person

  17. Geoff, I have rather fond memories (meteorologically associated) of Portsmouth, having lived in Portchester in Oct 1987 (the Great Storm) and in Copnor in Jan 1990 (Burns Day storm). I lost my keys on Southsea beach during the gale in Jan 1990 and miraculously found them again when I went back. On Oct 15th 1987 in Portchester, we went to bed and woke up in the early hours of the morning, noted it was a bit windy and then went back to sleep!

    Liked by 1 person

  18. “How Non-Governmental Organisations (Billionaires) Engineered the Gorton and Denton By-Election Victory”

    https://dailysceptic.org/2026/03/01/how-non-governmental-organisations-billionaires-engineered-the-gorton-and-denton-by-election-victory/

    ...Traditional media framed the result as an organic working-class rejection of Starmer or a progressive realignment. Those elements existed. The analyst’s lens does not deny grassroots agency. It quantifies how institutional amplification transformed that agency into a decisive – engineered – margin. The Gorton Pincer stands as the clearest documented case of 2026-style electoral engineering in the United Kingdom. It demands renewed scrutiny of non-party spending loopholes, foreign-influenced civic technology, charitable–political separations and polling-station integrity.

    Without such reforms, localised democracy risks becoming a theatre in which the most sophisticated NGO coalition prevails, not necessarily the candidate with the broadest community mandate.

    The result is legal.

    The precedent is troubling.

    Liked by 1 person

  19. Interesting, and more than a little worrying:

    “Green party membership in UK passes 200,000 after byelection victory

    Party leader Zack Polanski says surge in numbers ‘proves that the future of progressive politics belongs to the Greens’”

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/mar/01/green-party-membership-surge-byelection-victory-zack-polanski

    …The party’s membership has tripled since September last year, when it was about 68,000, after the announcement of Zack Polanski as its leader.…

    Liked by 2 people

  20. This is the first tweet I’ve seen where Polanski espouses the central green claim about energy costs:

    https://x.com/ZackPolanski/status/2028748988229296156

    There are plenty of sensible replies:

    “No they don’t fluctuate with war. They fluctuate when the sun doesn’t shine, which is most of the time in the UK, and the wind doesn’t blow.” 

    “The prices don’t fluctuate because we subsidise them regardless of whether the wind is blowing or it’s daylight. You sir are a clown.”

    X will sort the replies by relevance for you. They award the relevance prize to one that treats the Greens as Nazis, which I find disturbing. 

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  21. IMO George is starting to sound more and more like an earnest but misguided 5th form student:

    “We need to be honest about Iran – and how our rampant greed for oil is causing mayhem

    Oil has empowered capitalism, and some of the world’s most exploitative regimes. Move away from it and we can solve some of the key issues we face”

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/19/iran-greed-oil-capitalism-regimes

    As usual, I can sign up to some of what he says – things like this:

    Trump’s war aims are typically incoherent

    I wonder if George has joined Zack’s crusade? The pair of them sound equally deluded. This is George again:

    …The world’s military power exists in large part to deliver the profit from resources – especially oil – to banks and shareholders, commodity traders and asset managers, hedge funds and private equity companies.…

    Really? In China? In Iran? In Russia?

    …As the hydrocarbon industries and their financial backers find themselves threatened by green technologies, their grip on governments and the media has tightened. They’ve poured vast sums into climate denial and public dissuasion campaigns. Politics has become harsher, less open and less tolerant. The democratic recession is in large part driven by fossil fuel interests. The entire planet suffers from the resource curse.…

    Ah yes, your lot do keep pushing those claims, don’t you? When I say your lot, I mean the “green” lobby, massively funded by billionaires, that has insinuated itself into almost every section of the establishment, to the extent that vast amounts of taxpayers’ money are stealthily slid out to “green” organisations.

    …We would also defuel the greatest violence human beings have ever waged against each other: the degradation of all our lives through climate breakdown. The two emergencies – political and environmental – are one. We need to put ourselves on an anti-war footing with the urgency that nations have traditionally put themselves on war footings: an emergency programme to get fossil fuels out of our lives, faster and further than any government is currently planning.…

    Now that really is crazy, IMO. The rush to renewables is destroying the environment, and damaging people’s lives all over the world. The Guardian reports on this economic exploitation regularly. I list many of these reports in comments below this article:

    https://cliscep.com/2021/04/11/saving-the-planet-by-trashing-it/

    And whatever problems fossil fuels have caused (and I do acknowledge the problems) they have been responsible for lifting billions of people out of property. Without them, all our lives would be poorer. Not to mention the various by-products on which we are so massively dependent. I really do think any discussion about fossil fuels should bear a little more relation to reality.

    The concluding paragraph could have been written by that earnest fifth-former:

    …Concentrated fossil power leads to concentrated political power. Had we been less dependent on fossil fuels, there might have been no President Trump, no President Putin, no ayatollahs, no Prime Minister Netanyahu. Fossil fuels push the world towards autocracy. Overthrow our demand for them, and we overthrow much of the current tyranny. Greener, cleaner, cheaper, kinder, fairer: what a beautiful world we could have.

    Remove fossil fuels from the equation and everything will be just beautiful? Yeah, right. Careful, George – you sound to me a bit like some sort of inverse Trump, with that level of simplistic “reasoning”.

    Like

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