Reform UK reports Green leader Polanski to police over guillotine T-shirt post

On Sunday, Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party, shared a batch of photographs from a party event to his 713,000 Instagram followers. He had agreed to repost content from another account—a collaboration request he accepted without scrutinizing what he was amplifying. Among the twenty images in that bundle was a photograph of a man wearing a black t-shirt. Printed across it were the words "We're only making plans for Nigel" positioned above a large guillotine. The reference was to a 1979 XTC song, but the visual pairing was unmistakable in its implication.

Within hours, Reform UK filed a police report. Nigel Farage, the party's leader, posted on X that if he had shared such content, he would expect arrest—and so should Polanski. Reform's home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf went further, characterizing the image as "a photo of a man calling for the beheading of Nigel Farage" and describing it as potential incitement to murder. The timing, Yusuf emphasized, was particularly grave: Ann Widdecombe, a prominent Reform member, had been found dead in her Devon home just two weeks earlier, on July 9. A 28-year-old man has been charged with her murder.

Polanski's team moved quickly. Once the image was flagged to him, he unshared the post immediately. A Green Party spokesperson explained that he had been tagged in a multi-image post and clicked accept without realizing the full contents—that he had not seen the t-shirt photograph before sharing. The spokesperson added that Polanski "unequivocally does not support this type of dangerous message" and condemned the image as "clearly in poor taste, especially at a time of heightened fears for the security of public figures."

The photographer who took the picture, operating under the username just.barold, stepped forward and apologized. In a series of posts on X, they claimed responsibility and said the t-shirt was satirical, not intended as a genuine threat. "This wasn't intended to offend anyone and it's clearly not intended as a serious threat to anyone's safety whatsoever," they wrote. They also reported themselves to police and urged others not to blame Polanski, saying "this is not his fault."

Yet Reform UK pressed ahead. Beyond the police report, the party said it would escalate the matter to the monitoring officer at the Greater London Assembly, where Polanski serves as an elected member. Yusuf's language remained stark: "To do this just two weeks after our friend Ann was murdered is staggering. This is incitement to murder. It should be treated as such by the police."

The Metropolitan Police confirmed they had received a third-party report about the image and said officers were conducting enquiries. As of the time of reporting, Polanski had not been contacted by investigators. The incident sits within a broader, darker context. Widdecombe's death has reignited longstanding concerns about the security of British politicians. This year marks the tenth anniversary of Labour MP Jo Cox's murder and the fifth anniversary of Conservative MP David Amess's death. Following Widdecombe's killing, Polanski himself had called for all party leaders to receive enhanced security, telling BBC Breakfast that he had been worried about his own safety for some time.

The question of who bears responsibility for political security remains contested. Reform UK's Treasury spokesman accused the government of failing in its duty to protect Farage, noting that the party had declined a government-funded security offer the previous year. The Home Office disputed this characterization, stating that independent security experts, not ministers, make decisions about MPs' protection. What began as a social media mishap has become entangled in a larger argument about political violence, institutional responsibility, and the cost of public life in an era of genuine threat.