Content warning: This article contains descriptions of sexual assault, abuse and grooming

Jared Leto has been accused of sexual offences, including rape, and inappropriate behaviour by 10 women when they were teenagers.

The BBC documentary, Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret, hears from 10 women who allege that the US musician and singer assaulted them, threatened them with rape or harassed them between 2002 and 2016. Leto would have been in his thirties and forties at the time.

All the women were under the age of 18.

Despite repeated attempts to contact Jared Leto, he has not responded to the allegations put to him by the BBC.

Leto lured teenagers to hotels for abuse

Isabel* told the BBC that she was sexually assaulted by Leto in a “dingy gross motel” in 2002, when she was 17.

She assumed they would be going somewhere else so waited for Leto in the room while he took a shower, he then called her into the bathroom.

Isabel said:

I don’t think there was many words exchanged and he opened the shower curtain and started kissing me

She told the BBC that he forced her to masturbate him by grabbing her hand. She stopped him and asked to leave, the actor put on a towel and checked the corridor before letting her out. It was only later, when she looked up the actor online, that she realised he was in his forties.

‘Age is just a number’

Alex* was lured to Leto’s hotel under the pretence of an after-party, but was instead threatened with sexual assault. She was 19, but Leto thought she was 17, she said.

This happened in 2013 when his band, Thirty Seconds to Mars, played at the O2 Arena in London. Leto was 41 years old at the time.

Alex was offered free VIP tickets as many female models were, and was taken to a backstage room only for the models. Brad*, a crew member claimed that request was “direct from Jared”.

After the gig, Leto’s female assistant invited Alex to an after-party at Shoreditch House, a private members’ club in east London. Alex told Leto she was 17, as she “felt the need” to pretend to be younger around him. She says he replied:

 Age is just a number, and anyway, we’re in Europe.

After being taken to his hotel room, Alex asked him for a phone charger or cash so she could go home. When he refused, she asked to sleep on the chaise longue in the room. Leto told her that if she did, she would wake up “with a dick in her ass”.

Alex is in no doubt that this was a calculated plan to sexually assault her, aided by the people around him.

The assistant knew what to say, to lure me into his hotel room

Leto didn’t care about age of consent

Taylor*, then aged 14, met the musician at a signing after Thirty Seconds to Mars performed at a festival in 2005. She held out a t-shirt to sign, but Leto insisted on signing her breasts. She said it would’ve been “very obvious” she was a teenager.

He then instructed his security to take her backstage without asking her consent. Luckily, her mother intervened.

She told the BBC:

He looked at her and said, “It’s still a nice rack”. He just did not care.

Another victim, Clara*, said she first had sex with Leto in 2006, when she was 17 and he was 34, at his house in California. This was after a man close to Leto approached her on his behalf and asked for her phone number, while backstage at a Thirty Seconds to Mars gig.

Clara recalled a conversation with Leto about the age of consent. In California, sex with someone below the age of consent, which is 18, can be convicted of statutory rape.

Clara said:

He just kind of shrugged it off, like it wasn’t a huge concern for him.

Clara said they had sex three or four times, with age play being a part of it.

He told me, “I would like you to call me daddy”. And it was either pretend to be a little girl or “my little girl”.

There is no well-adjusted man in his 30s who’s going to look at a teenager and think…she would be a great partner.

Etta’s story

Etta* said Leto groomed her when she was 16, with him “abusing his celebrity status” to get her email address and phone number, which he then used to harass her with sexually explicit phone calls.

Leto knew she was 16, Etta told the BBC, which led to him asking questions about her being a virgin and having sexual “kinks”.

She said:

He did at least once mention him and I having sex at some point.

Leto then supposedly passed her number on to his friend ‘Christian’ under the guise of it being good for her modelling career. This man would call her and ask her to make porn, telling her it didn’t matter if she was underage. Etta now says she “would not be surprised” if Christian was, in fact, Leto.

Two years after the incidents, Leto asked Etta to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). When she refused, he “chuckled” about his lawyer’s concerns, she said in the documentary.

Four other women told the BBC that they were also subjected to sexual calls from Leto when they were underage. Two of the women say they also received calls, supposedly from other men, but who they also believe could’ve been Leto.

A long history of abuse in plain sight

These are the latest in a very long line of allegations about Leto. The BBC reported that journalists counted more than 120 “separate allegations made online relating to his behaviour towards women, some of them historical”.

Last year, allegations from Los Angeles DJ, Allie Teilz — who said Leto had assaulted her backstage at a gig, aged 17 — prompted others to speak out.

The post was a screenshot of her Facebook status from 2012 which read:

You’re not really in LA until Jared Leto tries to force himself on you backstage at an M83 show.. In a Kilt.. And a snow hat

Further to this, another nine women told US media outlet Air Mail last year about the inappropriate behaviour they had experienced or witnessed from Leto. He denied all the allegations.

It’s clear from reading these accounts that many people who worked for Leto allowed these abuses to happen. Much like Johnny Depp and other abusers, Leto is someone who has been operating in plain sight for years and who Hollywood protects.

*All names were changed to protect their identities

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By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

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It looks like the 2026 guga hunt won’t be going ahead.

The board of NatureScot will officially rule on the guga hunt licence application on 3 August. But a report from the agency’s scientific advisors has recommended refusal.

The advisors examined three options:

• Granting the full licence for the killing of 2,000 gannet chicks (guga).
• Granting a licence for a smaller bag of 500 guga.
• Refusing the licence.

They recommended the third option. The advisors said this was due to the impact on the overall gannet population in the Special Protection Area of North Rona and Sula Sgeir. Sula Sgeir is the remote island where the guga hunt takes place.

Population modelling concluded that killing 2,000 gannet chicks would have an “adverse effect on site integrity”. It also showed the same, although with less certainty, for killing 500. Therefore the advisors recommend refusing the licence.

Rob Pownall from Protect the Wild has been campaigning relentlessly against the guga hunt. He welcomed the report:

THIS IS HUGE! pic.twitter.com/4Oh9AaG6Bn

— Protect the Wild (@ProtectTheWild_) July 29, 2026

The League Against Cruel Sports has also responded to the report. Robbie Marsland, Scotland and Northern Ireland director, commented:

This is great news for the gannets of Sula Sgeir and we welcome NatureScot’s recommendation not to licence the hunt this year. But it’s a stay of execution, not a reprieve.

The decision has been made on conservation grounds which means that once the population recovers, there’s every likelihood that the killing starts again.

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We’re calling on the Scottish Government to close the loophole that lets up to 2,000 young birds on this tiny island be killed.

This hunt belongs to another century. Understanding of animal welfare has changed and no animal should die like this for food in Scotland in the 21st century.

As Marsland points out, the recommendation makes no mention of issues beyond the population impact. It didn’t cover food safety concerns. And it didn’t bother tackling the question of ‘humane slaughter methods’. This is despite both research and the hunters’ own brainless evidence suggesting the guga hunt is far from humane.

The advisors’ report includes the full text of the licence application. In it, the hunters detail the “capture method” they use:

If they don’t regard this as pertinent to their decision making then maybe the campaign to end the guga hunt for good will have to continue.

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By The Canary

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The Human Rights Network has added its voice to the growing number of advocacy organisations and watchdogs which have denounced Home Office plans to use AI facial-recognition software to assess the age of asylum-seeking children.

The charity has already worked with hundreds of minors whom the state has wrongfully catagorised as adults.  Back in April, the Human Rights Network exposed the fact that the Home Office frequently detains so-called “age-disputed children” as adults.

Of the 76 age-disputed detainees at the time, Social Services had reassessed (or were reassessing) 26 as children.

Less than a month later, the Helen Bamber Foundation revealed that the Home Office falsely identified 755 children as adults in 2025 alone.

Home Office choosing biased, racist tech

However, at the end of May, the Home Office announced plans that would further compound the problem by using AI facial-age estimation (FAE) in cases where an asylum seekers’ age is in dispute. The software was developed by German facial-recognition company Cognitec Systems.

At the time, the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium warned that the scheme could lead to yet more wrongful detentions. Technology monitoring group Foxglove also urged the government not to test experimental software on children.

In June, Lighthouse Reports published data from a leaked Home Office report which demonstrated that even FAE tech from the “best performing supplier” is deeply unreliable. The software consistently predicted that 17-year-olds were 18. It also showed distinct bias against Sub-Saharan Africans, along with a bias against girls.

It was also unclear if Cognitec was in fact the “best performing supplier”. As such, the possibility remains that the Home Office chose to run with an even worse (but cheaper or more convenient) option than the junk tech it actually tested.

‘This is not about protecting children’

Most recently, among these many critics of FAE, Maddie Harris of the Humans for Rights Network stated that AI wound do nothing to improve the number of false identifications among asylum-seeking children.

In a searing critique, Harris accused the government of trying to justify its broken system:

This is not about protecting children – this is about shoring up the decisions that [the authorities] are making.

Harris went on to add that the UK’s immigration system already adultifies children from countries like Somalia and Sudan. She stated that:

As soon as a child is treated as an adult, they are susceptible to – or exposed, rather – to any of the egregious consequences that the Home Office is applying to adults, such as detention and removal.

By falsely labelling them as adults, the Home Office can place these vulnerable minors in greater danger by detaining them alongside adults and deporting them more easily.

’30-month margin of error’

Worse still, the Guardian reported that:

The government has admitted that even the best systems can have a 30-month margin of error.

As a reminder, the Home Office intends to use FAE specifically when a minor’s age is in dispute. Even a 6-month margin of error should be inexcusable for such borderline cases when a child’s life is on the line.

And yet, the government clearly considers plus or minus 2.5 years inconsequential, because it just does not value asylum-seekers’ lives.

This is the ‘acceptable’ face of white supremacy, pure and simple.

Featured image via the Canary

By Grace

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4 min read8 min

There are few better places to begin rebuilding trust in government than social care.

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Andy Burnham has made an unusually personal – and politically risky – promise.

He said he was prepared to spend political capital sorting out social care. After decades of shelved commitments and broken promises, his pledge has prompted cautious optimism among campaigners, social care professionals on the frontlines and, most importantly, those currently struggling to access care. 

Actions will matter more than words, but the evidence so far indicates a recognition in the new administration that social care is about much more than one struggling public service. It is one of the places where Britain’s relationship between citizen and state is tested most sharply. 

Political capital may be needed to reform social care, but getting it right would also help rebuild trust between citizens and the state. 

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That’s because an expectation gap sits at the heart of social care in Britain.

That gap between expectation and reality is also at the heart of new research from Demos, carried out in partnership with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Analysing thousands of conversations in online support spaces, we found that people are describing not only a lack of funding, but a growing sense that the system no longer works with them or for them. 

One person reflected that after caring for their mother “all day, every day”, Carer’s Allowance amounted to less than 50p an hour. Others spoke about having to contact their MP to ensure a family member received at-home care. These stories paint a picture of a system that too often leaves people feeling unsupported, undervalued and alone.

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For years, the debate about social care has centred on funding. But our research suggests that the breakdown of trust in institutions also matters deeply. Every confusing assessment, every bureaucratic hurdle and every family left wondering why help never arrived, chips away at people’s confidence that the government can or will deliver on its promises when people need support the most. Over time, these experiences contribute to wider disengagement and a growing sense that meaningful change is beyond the reach of politics. 

That is why we’ve seen Baroness Casey, one year into her review of the social care system, raise the need for a new social contract for care. It’s become one of the clearest examples of a wider problem facing British politics. Too often, citizens’ expectations of the state and their lived experience are drifting further apart.

Burnham knows the system well. As health secretary under Gordon Brown, he attempted to establish a National Care Service. Before the Makerfield byelection, he argued that the Casey Review should move faster because reform cannot wait for another Parliament – a change he’s now pushed through. Those instincts have become one of the defining commitments of his new premiership. 

No PM will solve social care in 100 days. But the first few months of a government matter because they establish priorities. A commitment to either reforming means testing, implementing a comprehensive Fair Pay Agreement for care workers, or reviewing Carer’s Allowance would help continue pushing the social care reform agenda forward.

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Our research shows that this is about more than repairing a failing service: it’s about repairing trust. At Demos, we have argued that Britain needs a New Deal between citizen and state, one built on respect and institutions that people believe are on their side. Social care is where that challenge becomes deeply personal. When people reach the moment in their lives when they most need public support, they should not leave believing the system treated them with suspicion or indifference.

Burnham has made social care one of the first major political tests of his premiership. There are few better places to begin rebuilding trust in government. If the new administration cannot rebuild trust at the moments that matter most in people’s lives, it will struggle to earn public confidence for its biggest ambitions.

 

Lucy Bush is Director of Research and Participation at Demos

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Andy Burnham set out a roadmap to reforming social care (Alamy)

4 min read16 min

The Prime Minister has said that social care in England is “as unfair as American health care” as he pledged to do what successive governments have failed to do and reform the system.

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Speaking at a care home in London on Wednesday morning, Andy Burnham said he was willing to take a hit to his own popularity to bring forward changes. “I know this will require me to put what political capital I have on the table. And it might wear down that political capital in some ways,” he said.

He added that any reform to social care will “require difficult decisions” and the Labour government would be “honest with people about those”. 

“We will put them before the country at the right time, and we will hopefully proceed with people’s consent,” he said.

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He added that social care is intrinsically linked to pressures facing the NHS and cannot be treated like it “lives in its own silo”.

“There is no way we can restore the NHS to the standards we all want to see without fixing this issue. We can’t do it,” the PM said.

Successive governments have attempted to grapple with the issue of rising costs of social care. While health secretary under Gordon Brown in 2010, Burnham himself backed the introduction of a 10 per cent levy on estates to pay for a universal National Care Service.

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Planned changes have failed to materialise, however, often due to the issue being seen as too politically difficult. Even supporters of social care reform accept that it will be expensive, with experts estimating it will cost billions of pounds a year.

But Burnham said he could “never forgive himself” if he didn’t try to fix the system while in power, stressing that there had been 22 reviews into social care in the last three decades. “It’s a major dereliction of public duty that Parliament has not faced up to this… It’s shameful, to be honest,” the PM said.

The term social care describes support for adults with care and support needs. In England, it is arranged by local authorities, and some people receive state support to help pay for it.

With the UK facing an ageing population, demand on social care has increased in recent years, putting severe pressure on local authorities which help provide it.

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The Telegraph reported overnight that officials were drawing up plans for a new tax on income to fund social care as one of the options to reform the system. Asked if the government can transform social care without raising taxes, Burnham said: “I think more is possible within existing budgets”.

On Wednesday morning, Baroness Louise Casey, who is leading a government commission on reforming the social care system, told The Today programme that pay for carers should rise as part of reforms.

Her words were echoed by the PM later when he said carers “should be the best paid people in society, not the worst” and that he would focus “immediately” on strengthening the social care workforce.

Referencing the previous government’s introduction of a fair pay agreement for social care staff, which is due to come in the financial year 2028-29, Burnham said that move was a “massive building block of a national care service”.

Building on this, the PM said he wanted “to look at how we turn the fair pay agreement into a bigger reform to improve the social care workforce”. He said he also wanted to start to think about progression routes for young people coming into social care.

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Casey also announced the launch of the “big conversation on care”. 

Casey was commissioned by the previous government under Keir Starmer to chair an independent commission into adult social care, which was due to report in 2028. Burnham has asked Casey to bring her report forward a year, to 2027.

Later today, Burnham will convene a virtual summit with Conservatives and Liberal Democrats as part of a cross-party attempt to fix the social care system. 

Asked about the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which is set to be reintroduced by a backbench MP,  the PM said that he believed that the debate should not come before the “fixing of the funding of palliative care and social care.

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Speaking before, Health Secretary Yvette Cooper said that the government would appoint a “dementia tsar” later this year.

 

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The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has called for Andy Burnham to raise taxes on banks, following Barclays‘ announcement of bumper second-quarter profits.

The trade union body is advocating for the government to spend the money on a social energy tariff. According to the TUC, this measure could decrease middle and lower-income household energy bills by as much as £559 a year.

Paul Nowak, the TUC’s general secretary, said:

Big banks like Barclays are raking it in while working people and local businesses are struggling. High interest rates have been a boon for banks but have meant mortgage misery and higher bills for the rest of us.

Andy Burnham has rightly pledged to prioritise tackling the cost-of-living crisis. With the war in Iran rumbling on, energy prices are only going to rise – and households will need more support in the months ahead.

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This is not a ‘hard choice’. Barclays’ bonanza profits show that banks can easily afford to pay more tax. This is a chance for the new Prime Minister and Chancellor to show whose side they’re on. It’s time to increase the bank surcharge and tax banks to bring down energy bills.

TUC criticises Barclays’ bumper profits

On Tuesday, Barclays posted pre-tax profits of £3.3 billion for Q2. That represents a 31% increase on the year, pushing the lender’s half-year profits to £6.1 billion, the Guardian reported.

Meanwhile, the wider financial and insurance sector paid out a massive £25 billion in bonuses alone in the year leading up to Q1 of 2026.

As things stand, banks pay an extra 3% in corporation tax on profits over £100 million. However, that surcharge stood at 8% up until 2023, when it was reduced under Tory rule. The Lib Dem’s analysis of Office for Budget Responsibility figures suggested that this would cost the UK £22 billion over the following six years.

Given both Barclay’s massive profits and the huge losses from reducing the surcharge in the first place, the TUC has urged the government to raise bank taxes once again.

As an illustration, the TUC gave estimates for the money generated by three different levels of taxation over 4 years:

• Simply reinstating the 8% surcharge would raise £9 billion
• A 16% surcharge would net £24 billion
• A 35% surcharge — which happens to match the Tories’ windfall tax on energy companies — would make the UK a massive £60 billion

Featured image via the Canary

By Grace

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Andrew and Tristan Tate are currently being held in an American jail while they fight extradition to the UK. Should the authorities extradite the brothers, they will face incredibly serious charges, including the possession of Child Sexual Abuse Materials (CSAM). And it’s the seriousness of these charges which makes the following statement from their lawyer so unbelievable:

Andrew Tate's lawyer, Joseph McBride:

"Even if you accept all the allegations against them is true, the amount of good they've done for the world tremendously outweighs the bad."

At the time of this interview, the Tates were charged with alleged crimes including rape, human… pic.twitter.com/qX0RH3dCvk

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— Gadget (@Gadget440) July 28, 2026

Tate brothers horrific allegations

The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service said the following on 19 July:

The CPS has decided to prosecute Andrew Tate, 39, with seven further counts of rape, three counts of arranging or facilitating trafficking for sexual exploitation, three counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and 19 additional charges for offences relating to indecent images of a child and extreme pornography.

The CPS has decided to prosecute Tristan Tate, 38, with one count of sexual assault, two counts of rape and three counts of arranging or facilitating trafficking for sexual exploitation.

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As the documentarian Gadget noted, the Tates’ lawyer seems to be arguing that the brothers’ behaviour is overall such a positive that they should be allowed to commit a certain amount of crimes – even if said crimes are among the gravest that a person could possibly commit. This would be a ridiculous argument if he was talking about a famous humanitarian; it’s especially grievous when applied to a pair of globally notorious misogynists.

As any teacher can attest, the Tates – especially Andrew – have had a profoundly negative impact on today’s youth. As one noted:

We had some incidents in school with derogatory language towards female staff (eg boys barking at female staff and blocking doorways so they couldn’t leave the classroom), as a direct result of Andrew Tate videos.

The Tates’ influence on the world has been to encourage the hatred of women. Their alleged crimes also centre on the hatred of women. In other words, one does not excuse the other. In fact, the two combined make each other worse (should the crimes be proven in court, obviously).

Foot in mouth

As documented by Gadget, this isn’t the first time lawyer McBride has done a poor job defending his clients. In one recent interview:

Joseph McBride argues that Andrew and Tristan Tate should not be segregated in the Special Housing Unit.

Then, he explains exactly why high-profile prisoners accused of serious sexual crimes against women or children often are.

Gadget also addressed the following talking points from McBride:

1. “Tate is not a flight risk because he cooperated with judiciary control in Romania”.
2. “We haven’t been given evidence like victim names, witness statements. We demand the evidence and police records from the UK.”

On the former, Gadget notes that the Tates received an unusually lenient deal from Romania. Said deal allows them to “to travel the world freely while charged with crimes as serious as allegedly raping a 15-year-old and trafficking a 17-year-old”. There’s pretty much no chance the UK would offer a such a deal, with the brothers almost certainly facing incarceration until trial (and likely life imprisonment should they lose).

In other words, Romania made it so the Tates weren’t a flight ‘risk’ by simply allowing them to take flight. The same would not be true of the UK.

On the latter point, Gadget noted:

It’s not unusual for the UK not to produce its full evidence at this stage. Extradition hearings aren’t trials – they determine whether someone should be extradited, not whether they’re guilty.

Farage won’t say Andrew Tate is a bad role model for children

Not looking good

There are many who believe that Tate was indeed a human trafficker – specifically because of things like this:

Here he admits in more detail to tricking women, giving them the false impression of love, and using a "bottom bitch" for manipulation for the sole purpose of putting them in front of a camera and making money off of them.

Deception and exploitation. This is human trafficking. pic.twitter.com/XtS6uU2E5g

— Ridvan Aydemir | Apostate Prophet (@ApostateProphet) June 23, 2023

For those who presume the brothers’ guilt, it’s no doubt reassuring to see that their lawyer is such a raging incompetent.

Featured image via the Canary

By Willem Moore

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The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has set a date to hear the Senegalese Football Federation’s appeal against the decision to award the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) title to Morocco.

CAS announced that the arbitration panel would begin its deliberations following the hearing on 8 October.

The case stems from the tournament final on 18 January which descended into chaos after a penalty was awarded to Morocco in stoppage time following a VAR review.

A number of Senegalese players, led by manager Bab Tiaw, left the pitch before returning some 15 minutes later, whilst riots broke out in the stands and on the sidelines.

Although Morocco’s Ibrahim Diaz missed the penalty, Pape Gueye scored a goal that gave Senegal a 1-0 victory after extra time.

However, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) had ruled that Senegal had withdrawn from the game once they walked off the pitch. Morocco was awarded a 3-0 victory, thereby crowning them AFCON champions by default.

The Senegalese Football Federation rejected the decision and appealed to CAS, demanding that it be overturned and that the result achieved on the pitch be upheld. It also requested that the proceedings be expedited.

However, CAS clarified that not all parties had agreed to an expedited procedural process.

At the conclusion of its statement, CAS emphasised the need to rely solely on its official statements, warning against the circulation of inaccurate information regarding the case, and confirming that any updates or final decision would be published via its official channels.

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By Alaa Shamali

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The ideas behind Britain’s Green surge began in a Brazilian jail. In the 1970s, Augusto Boal invented a technique he named Theatre of the Oppressed. It sought to awaken audiences by making them active participants, turning spectators into “spect-actors.”

Theatre of the Oppressed

Boal had drawn the idea from educator Paulo Freire, whose Pedagogy of the Oppressed argued that conventional education was a tool of domination, a “banking” model where teachers deposited facts into passive students.

Jailed by Brazil’s military junta in 1964 and driven into exile, Freire proposed instead that teacher and student examine the world together, aiming at conscientização, or critical consciousness. To exist humanly, Freire wrote, is

to name the world, to change it.

Boal took that idea off the page and put it on a stage.

The technique works by dissolving the boundary between stage and audience. Boal’s best-known form, Forum Theatre, stages a scene of everyday injustice, stops it halfway and invites an audience member to take a character’s place and try differently. The place of theatre, Boal argued, is not to

show the correct path, [but] to offer the means by which all possible paths may be examined.

The shift he and Freire were after was cultural before it was political. Not a transfer of power, but a prior question: had people been so thoroughly treated as spectators that they had forgotten they could take the stage?

Polanski’s theatrics

Half a century later, a British actor trained in that tradition is applying it to Westminster.

Before politics, Zack Polanski worked with a production company staging Forum Theatre shows – a rather different training ground than the PPE-to-think-tank pipeline that produces most British politicians. His campaign slogan, “make hope normal again“, puts a Freirean ring on a more infamous populist catchphrase: politics as an invitation to agency, rather than a return to past glory.

His political style is less about class struggle than participation. But that is a theory of the room, not of the state. It explains why Polanski fits the Greens better than Labour – a party built around discipline and lines for members to follow. But what comes next for the Greens?

A green politics of participation

Before the Greens, Polanski was a Liberal Democrat – a party not known for revolutionary politics. He joined in 2015, drawn chiefly by its support for proportional representation – a cause about widening who gets a say in politics, rather than about any economic programme. He left in 2017 over the party’s foreign-policy compromises.

The detail matters. Polanski was never a left-wing ideologue working his way toward the correct party. He was someone preoccupied with participation, who happened to find that preoccupation served better by the Greens than by the Lib Dems. But whether a theatrical method translates into a governing one is a question his career has not yet had to answer. The harder question is what the tradition is worth when the rehearsal ends.

Green Party membership has grown from the tens of thousands into the hundreds of thousands since Polanski became leader. In February, the party won its first parliamentary by-election ever, overturning a Labour majority in a seat held since the Second World War. The winner was Hannah Spencer, who weeks earlier had been in college, a plumber learning how to plaster.

Before politics, Polanski performed in a Forum Theatre production playing a leader who steered his audience astray, and his spect-actors overthrew him. The tradition was built for exactly that moment: the audience discovering it could act, the protagonist discovering he could be removed.

Polanski is still in rehearsal. What comes after is another question entirely, and one he will have to answer himself: is a theory of stagecraft ready for the test of statecraft?

Featured image via Wikimedia

By Hugo Harvey

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