CITY GRUMP
You could argue that the Green Party has been cruising along happily in its eco-bubble for years when, suddenly—a la Ridley Scott’s Alien—out of the body politic bursts one Zack Polanski, creating mayhem wherever he goes. But, as in Alien, will the Ellen Ripley equivalent (Kemi Badenoch?) do for him?
I don’t think Polanski is a 2026 Alien, but for me, the question is more: is he demonic? The former Archbishop of Canterbury, in an interview last month with UnHerd, declares that you can be animated by a malign spirit: “I actually believe that there are malign forces in the universe, and that people who may not have consciously malign or diabolical designs can be manipulated by these destructive forces. […] The Devil is at work in you and me. The Devil is at work in every institution. Sometimes it comes to the fore more clearly. And at the moment, I worry that something is being normalised, licensed, and allowed into the room which ought to be regarded—to put it with Anglican politeness—with considerable suspicion.”
Manipulated by destructive forces? Well, certainly Polanski wants to destroy the world we live in and with. In no particular order, he is for:
- A four-day working week
- Decriminalising personal possession of drugs and buying cannabis over the counter
- No school until age seven
- Leaving NATO, abandoning the nuclear deterrent, and asking Putin to nullify his nuclear arsenal
- Equalising Capital Gains Tax with Income Tax
- Taxing assets over £10 million
- Introducing a land ownership tax
- Increasing tax on larger companies
- Removing the upper earnings limit on National Insurance contributions
- Exiting the bond market “doom loop” with a rethink of economic rules
And on and on. To the gullible, or those who prefer to spend their time taking selfies and playing video games, many of these Polanski policies sound beguilingly attractive. Accordingly, is Polanski the TikTok generation’s Pied Piper of Hamelin? You will remember that, in this famous tale, the Pied Piper is frequently portrayed as a demonic figure who punishes the comfortably off townspeople by leading their children away to their doom. Indeed, even a half-decent analysis of the consequences of these policies would reveal that doom is what the TikTok generation—and the rest of us—will be heading for, if Polanski leads us into his ways.
Then there is the question of whether Polanski is demonising Jews. Even he has had to backpedal a little over his initial response to the Golders Green stabbings on 29th April this year. There is little doubt that some of his Green Party candidates are openly antisemitic. George Chesterton, writing in the Telegraph on 16th April, noted: “In my dealings with Green supporters, I have found them uniformly aggressive and incoherent. On the doorstep, they can’t defend the party’s rampant anti-Israeli rhetoric. When I asked one activist why it would be better for children to stay out of formal learning until they were seven, he replied, ‘Don’t you care about your children?’—as if I was the mad one for asking. In their minds, they don’t have to explain; it is justification by faith alone.”
Demonic, or just another attention-seeking politician? You decide.
The City Grump has spent some 40 years in the City of London. He started as a stockbroker’s analyst but after some years he decided he was too grumpy to continue with the sell side of things so he moved to the buy side and became a fund manager for the next 20 years, selling his own business in the 1990s. Post the millennium, he found himself in turn chairing a stockbroker, a financial PR company, and an Exchange. He still keeps his hand in, chairing a brace of VCTs and investing personally in start-ups. The City Grump’s publications are available here.