Greens review social media operation as Polanski row rumbles on

The current row began after Polanski shared a single post on Instagram that contained a carousel of 20 pictures.

The re-post was shared to Polanski’s 713,000 followers, because he accepted a request to tag him as a collaborator, which on the platform makes him a “co-author,” placing it on his page and into his followers’ feeds.

Polanski said he had not noticed the offending image among the others on the post.

According to him, he had accepted collaborator tags for eight other posts from the same event in Bristol alone.

Reform UK leader Farage claimed the t-shirt amounted to incitement to murder and his party reported it to the police.

Neither the Metropolitan Police nor Avon and Somerset Police say the incident meets the threshold for further action.

But the political row has continued with Reform UK MP Robert Jenrick calling Polanski a “nasty piece of work”, at a news conference earlier on Thursday.

Inside the Green Party, there has been some criticism of Polanski’s behaviour online.

He has attracted positive and negative attention for the rate at which he posts, comments, likes and replies across multiple platforms including X, Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram.

And this is not the first time a quick reaction has attracted controversy; last month he had to apologise to police after posting about their response to the Golders Green attack.

One senior party source said it was clear that due diligence had not been done on Polanski’s social media output, and that moving forwards he needs “tight controls” to stay credible, while keeping a similar tone of engagement with his followers.

They pointed out that the speed and number of Polanski’s interactions came with a “small upside” but a “colossal downside”, and with the latest incident he had “shot himself in the foot at precisely the wrong time”.

It comes as recent polling suggests the Green Party has lost ground to Labour, following Andy Burnham’s election as Labour leader, and down from a peak earlier this year.

They added their concerns about a wider problem with the party’s vetting on social media and of candidates, including around antisemitic posts in recent months.

Several candidates in recent elections have stood down over their social media activity, with two candidates arrested during May’s local elections, and another suspended after being elected.

But Green Party peer and former deputy mayor of London Baroness Jones said the criticism of Polanski’s Instagram re-post seemed to be “mainly from our opponents, not internal discussions”.

She said that her party leader had “made a mistake”, adding “we’ve all done it and got flak.”

But she added: “His online presence is what makes him relatable”.

Along with relatability, comes popularity: Polanski is the second-most followed UK leader on Instagram after Nigel Farage. The Greens surpassed other parties to become the most popular on the platform this year.

It is also seen as where a good portion of their voters spend time, as they are the most popular party among the under-30s, according to pollsters YouGov.