Declassified UK: How the media turns challengers from the left into monsters

Posted: 26th October 2026

How the media turns challengers from the left into monsters

Des Freedman

Regular Contributor
Declassified UK

According to a recent column in the Guardian, “the rightwing press is on a war footing” but, strangely enough, Prime Minister Andy Burnham is “the enemy”.

Of course, it’s true that billionaire-owned news outlets are going to attack any policy measure that smacks of redistribution and to take every opportunity to criticise Labour.

But the Labour government isn’t giving them that many opportunities and Burnham himself has avoided the hysterical and pernicious coverage that’s afforded to political leaders who stand outside the mainstream.

In fact, if media are intent on vilifying any single British political figure, it’s the Green leader Zack Polanski.

As a result of his opposition to Zionism and his support for wealth taxes and renationalisation, he’s been described as both a “clown” and a “danger to Britain”, as “off his head” but also a “colossal threat”.

Melanie Phillips wrote in The Times that Polanski, the only Jewish leader of a UK political party, promotes views that are a “Trojan horse for antisemitism”. This was published two days after The Times, along with other newspapers, had run a virulently antisemitic cartoon of Polanski.

The witch hunt against Polanski peaked after he came second in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election in October, trebling the Green’s vote share and cutting Labour’s majority.

Just hours are the count had finished, the BBC was alreadyreporting about the “greatest crisis of his leadership”, ITN was insisting that Polanski was going to continue as leader (despite this being a question initiated by the media themselves), while the Telegraph simply noted that “Zack Polanski is probably finished”. The Mail then described the result as a “humiliating” defeat and claimed that he was now “on the ropes”.

This was not quite the response that Nigel Farage received as UKIP candidate when he also came second in the South Thanet constituency in the 2015 general election earning exactly the same vote share as Polanski.

Far from talking up his failure, the Mail gushed that “high praise is also due to Nigel Farage [for] giving a voice to millions who felt disenfranchised”. A Sun editorial noted that “We commiserate too with Nigel Farage and admire how he built UKIP into the third most popular party.”

But Polanski has committed the cardinal sin both of referring to genocide in Gaza and refusing to buckle under the weight of hostile questioning.

For example, when challenged by Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC following the ‘Zionism is racism’ vote at Green Party conference on whether he planned to overturn the motion, Polanski calmlypointed out that this was a democratic decision taken following a lengthy debate and insisted that it wasn’t the motion that was controversial but the fact that “75,000 Palestinians have been murdered in the last few years.”

Help us reach 5,000 monthly donors

Regular monthly donations keep us independent, and fearless.

The vilification of Polanski is just the latest example of what happens when a political figure challenges the political and media consensus, especially concerning foreign policy and defence matters.

This is precisely what happened to Jeremy Corbyn and it’s likely to face La France Insoumise’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon in next year’s French presidential elections. Sky has already dismissedhim as ‘France’s Jeremy Corbyn’ while the Guardian recently rana comment piece that spent more time dismissing him as a fan of Vladimir Putin than it did trying to understand the reasons for his growing popularity.

Reflecting on why angry students in France are turning to Mélenchon for political inspiration, the BBC’s Paris correspondent attributed this to his “cunning” and cited a police report that students were being “egged on” by far-left groups like his party, LFI.

Declassified UK readers won’t be surprised by any of this but we should be prepared to resist the next chapter of monstering and demonisation when it comes to a political challenge to the status quo.

Best wishes,

Des.

Want to share Between the Lines from Des Freedman with someone?
Encourage them to sign up for this regular newsletter at www.declassifieduk.org/newsletter