Zack Polanski says Mail have given up ‘acting normal’

On 25 April, the Daily Mail published a piece of speculative fiction describing what the UK would be like under prime minister Zack Polanski. While much of the Mail’s regular reporting is arguably fiction, the difference between their day-to-day output and this is that the latest piece was actually pretty funny at times — intentionally or not:

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The Daily Mail aren't even trying to pretend to be normal anymore.

Lower bills & invest in our communities.https://t.co/0qbagSvIYp pic.twitter.com/IWo9zCzdCe

— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) April 25, 2026

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Fuel for fossils

McKinstry is a journalist, historian, and author. His body of work includes books about Winston Churchill, the 1966 national football team, some cricketer, and the Spitfire aeroplane. Given all that, it won’t surprise you to learn he has the politics of your average pub bore.

As Canary analyst William Kedjanyi said:

McKinstry’s piece begins:

There was a hint of drizzle in the air on that cold April morning as the Prime Minister cycled down Greta Thunberg Way, formerly Whitehall.

This piece is described as a “nightmare vision of the future”. It works well as an opener, because it establishes the sort of things this Churchill fancier finds himself getting upset about:

1. Cycling.
2. Inconsequential changes.
3. The thought of young women.

These fears repeat again and again throughout the piece:

Having dismounted and passed through the security gates, the two men parked their bikes in the unfeasibly large, under-used cycle rack near the door of No 10 that had been repainted green on day one of Polanski’s tenure.

Does this mean the ‘unfeasibly large cycle rack’ was already there? Also, it can’t be much of a dystopia if Polanski isn’t forcing people to cycle to work. Oh, and beyond that, why is Zack Polanski cycling to work at No 10? You know the PM lives at the office, right, Leo?

This bit covers journalists being upset about a power cut:

The cause of their discontent was yet another power cut, a form of disruption that was now happening only too frequently after Polanski’s government imposed a comprehensive ban on the use of fossil fuels.

Despite the panic from guys like McKinstry, renewable energy has become incredibly cheap and effective; this is why it’s overtaking fossil fuels:

This next bit is actually worse somehow:

Nor could these angry professionals be mollified by the distribution of vegan snacks made by earnest No 10 interns. Their hostility only evaporated once the electricity supply was restored by cranking up an ancient generator in the basement, ironically powered by diesel.

You really shouldn’t be running a diesel generator inside, Leo because one of the things they generate is carbon monoxide.

Call yourself a fossil fuel fan?

Zack Polanski — Objectionable Dissidents

In a later section, McKinstry writes:

In opposition, he had caused outrage by ruminating over how to build a society without these objectionable dissidents.

From this point, the piece is mostly just whiny self-victimisation. The internal logic remains consistently inconsistent, anyway, as this section demonstrates:

oil and gas companies and electricity generators and distributors were interrogated by truth commissioners, their openness, he found, often lubricated by threats of nationalisation.

So in eco-Stalinist Britain, oil and gas companies have been allowed to remain private, have they?

McKinstry also asks the reader to think of the poor Jeremy Clarkson:

Unesco had urged in 2025 that ‘climate change denial’ should be made an international crime. Polanski’s Greens adopted this proposal for British domestic consumption, thereby creating a significant number of political prisoners, a category that had never existed before in peacetime. He recalled with relish the incarceration of ‘king of the petrolheads’ Jeremy Clarkson.

Ironically, Clarkson has spent the past few years accidentally demonstrating the impacts of climate change:

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Every season of Clarkson’s Farm highlights how unprecedented rain, drought, or heat can cause massive problems. His own show reveals the real consequences of climate change. I guess it’s easy not to care though when you own a farm mainly as a tax dodge. https://t.co/iEftlCVuB1

— Dan De'Ath (@DeAthCardiff) March 9, 2026

Hard to follow

Skipping to the end, McKinstry writes:

Polanski’s much vaunted wealth tax – levied at 1 per cent on people with assets worth than £10million and 2 per cent on wealth over £1billion – had been a predictable disaster, causing a vast exodus of investors.

If it was us, we probably would have used higher percentages to better sell the con — something we’d have full leeway to do given that this is a work of fiction. This is especially true given that a lot of the Green’s policies around wealth distribution are actually broadly popular:

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NEW: 65% of Brits support the Green Party's policy of capping CEO pay at ten times the pay of the lowest paid employee pic.twitter.com/Ld2VbpzaqW

— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) April 17, 2026

There’s far more to the piece than we’ve covered, but it’s poorly written, repetitive, non-sensical, and dull — i.e. we want to stop reading it now. It’s also quite long, so if you’re a fan of the worst shit you’ve ever read, there’s a lot to not enjoy here.

Featured image via Barold

By Willem Moore

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