Polanski refuses apology for guillotine post, calls it 'inadvertent mistake'

On Monday evening, Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, shared a photograph from a party he had been asked to help promote on Instagram. The image showed a man wearing a t-shirt printed with a guillotine and the phrase "we're only making plans for Nigel"—a reference to Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader. By Tuesday, Polanski had deleted the post, acknowledged it as a mistake, and found himself at the center of a political firestorm that would define his week.

Reform UK's home affairs spokesperson, Zia Yusuf, characterized the image as a call for Farage's beheading and suggested it constituted incitement to murder. Farage himself posted a screenshot to X, saying that if he had shared anything similarly inflammatory, he would expect arrest—and that Polanski should face the same consequence. The party reported Polanski to the Metropolitan Police and filed a complaint with the Greater London Authority's monitoring officer, asking for an investigation into whether he had breached the code of conduct for elected members.

When Polanski sat down with BBC Newsnight, he was asked directly whether he would apologize. He refused. He had not read the slogan on the t-shirt, he explained, because he was simply scrolling through images of people enjoying themselves at a party. He had only noticed a man wearing a rainbow hat. The collaboration with the photographer's Instagram account meant he was posting the fifth image in a series of twenty without examining each one closely. "It was a mistake," he said, but not one that warranted an apology—because it was not deliberate.

Asked a second time to apologize, Polanski again declined. He pointed out that Farage had cropped the image to make it appear as though Polanski himself had posted it directly, a distortion he called "fundamentally dishonest." By refusing to apologize, Polanski argued, he was declining to play into what he saw as a political attack designed to amplify the controversy. He had received a death threat on Tuesday, he noted, and the escalating language around the incident—the framing of it as incitement to murder—was putting him in danger as well.

Given a third opportunity to apologize, Polanski doubled down. He said that the moment he apologized, Farage would use it as vindication across social media, ratcheting up tensions further. Instead, he wanted to draw a line. He condemned political violence unequivocally and said Farage's safety mattered. But he also recognized this as a calculated political move. "If Nigel Farage wants to apologise for all the times that he's put other people in danger," Polanski added, "then I will be happy to make an apology."

The Metropolitan Police confirmed they had received a complaint but offered no update on whether they were investigating. Keith Prince, a Reform London Assembly Member, dismissed Polanski's explanation as implausible, calling it "frankly risible" to claim ignorance of what he was promoting. A Reform UK source told the BBC that Polanski's refusal to apologize, combined with his admission that the post was wrong and dangerous, made him unfit to lead a national political party.

The incident arrived in a moment of heightened sensitivity around political safety. Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden noted that all politicians have a duty to be careful about what they post on social media, a comment made in the shadow of recent violence affecting public figures. The row between Polanski and Farage had become less about a single deleted photograph and more about competing claims of victimhood, dishonesty, and who bore responsibility for the temperature of political discourse itself.