Gaza Isn't On The Ballot Today. Your Country Is.

While Plonker Polanski virtue-signals about Gaza, your county, your country, and your countrymen are on the line.

Banksy’s latest ‘artwork’ repurposed to show what is actually happening to Britain ahead of today’s election

Here we are, my friends — over a year since 65 of us were elected under the Reform banner in Durham and across the country. And you know what? The sky hasn’t fallen in. Services haven’t stopped. If anything, services are making savings despite delivering, the tax burden is lighter, and the relationship between officer and elected is thriving — despite our unapologetic stance of locals-first and Net Zero last in stark contrast of the Labour and Lib Dem administrations of old.

But this piece isn’t to ask for a virtual pat on the back. It’s to ask you to perform a physical get-off-your-arse. If I might be so thoroughly impertinent.

There is a sickness that has infected our great country. It depresses me to see the nation that gave the world so very much — not least men like my late Durham Light Infantry veteran grandfather — reduce itself to an international arrivals lounge for foreign benefits claimants. We spend as much on welfare as we make, while an energy policy rooted in Net Zero lunacy drives the deindustrialisation of Britain. Take Nissan in Sunderland, scaled back only this week. Once it had competition. Now the only competition on Britain’s roads is which variation of President Xi’s CCP assembly line you fancy parking outside your house.

I’ve travelled this campaign like a dot-to-dot from the Isle of Wight to Sunderland. I’ve been to Sunderland so many times my absent Magpie-mad father has likely written me out of whatever he was intending to leave me. But I digress.

This morning I listened to an interview with the leader of the Green Party — once renowned for leafy activism on windmills and waste, now better known for Gaza and performative grievance. Zack “Plonker” Polanski.

To give you a flavour of the man: The Economist recently analysed 35,000 of his Bluesky “likes.” For those with a life, Bluesky is a copy of X, only with rather less of a penchant for freedom of expression — a refuge for the liberal dispossessed who used to drive Elon Musk’s cars and would now sooner drive over him in one.

Polanski has not missed a single day of liking posts on the platform since April 2025 — at one point racking up 90 a day. Most are fawning adoration of himself or loathing of Israel. He even liked 20 separate posts attacking a lefty Guardian columnist for a mildly critical article. And they say we on the right are thin-skinned.

Polanski represents a particular type — the validation-seeker. Before finding his “calling” in politics (oft referred to as show business for ugly people), he was a fake hypnotherapist and spokesperson for every human rights-loving liberal outfit who claimed hypnosis could enlarge breasts. Yes, the man who wants to dictate your boiler settings and carbon footprint once claimed he could hypno-tit women into a larger cup size. Deeply peculiar stuff from a deeply peculiar man.

This push for politics has made him the poster boy of a movement destined to split — given one side of his new coalition isn’t exactly a fan of his lifestyle. Yet he panders. This morning he declared Gaza is “on the ballot.” I noticed the furrow of his brow as he said it; he knows it’s patently absurd. What does Gaza have to do with potholes in Gateshead? Nothing. But for Polanski, validation matters more than the repercussions of fanning the flames of sectarianism at home. He’d do well to remember what happened to the political Left in Iran once the Islamists they pandered to actually seized power.

Polanski will undoubtedly fade. Polls suggest his approval rating is dropping faster than the weight of an Ozempic-jabbing celebrity. But the politics he represents — the politics of the mirror — won’t fade with him. I haven’t forgotten being in Batley and Spen (where the former grammar school teacher is still in hiding for showing a cartoon) for a by-election in which a Labour candidate’s sexuality was weaponised by the sectarian morality police. That cancer is still in our politics. It just changes hosts.

So tomorrow matters. If you believe your politics ought to apply to your place — your county, your country, your countrymen — and not the religious allegiances of some sectarian bigot abroad, then vote.

You’re on the side of the right. You have the truth on your side. And today you have a pen.

Use it.