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BBC runs scared from Polanski’s truth-telling with embarrassing Kuenssberg spectacle

The BBC has just run scared from Green Party leader Zack Polanski’s truth-telling. Despite interviewing other major party leaders around the time of their conferences, Laura Kuenssberg refused to do the same with Polanski. And the Green leader has suggested this is because of his strong anti-genocide stance.

Following last week’s Manchester synagogue attack, the BBC packed Kuenssberg’s show on 5 October with establishment right-wing voices from Labour and the Conservatives. And despite Polanski being both a Jewish person from Manchester and the leader of a major party holding its conference at the weekend, the BBC refused to let him speak either in the studio or via video link.

Polanski has criticised the Labour government’s intensifying crackdown on people’s democratic rights in recent days. So the BBC‘s decision to de-platform him looks very much like complicity in this draconian behaviour.

Why are Kuenssberg and the BBC scared of Polanski?

Polanski called the BBC out himself:

And, it didn’t go unnoticed either:

The Green Party is now the fourth biggest party in the UK, with 86,000 members. It has just overtaken the Liberal Democrats, is only four times smaller than Labour and three times smaller than Reform, and is hot on the heels of the flailing Conservative party. The party is on a roll, thanks largely to Labour dumping the left and aping Reform under corporate crony Keir Starmer.

It’s easier for the BBC to silence smaller parties when our awful electoral system does that too, of course. Because Labour got one MP for every 23,000 votes in 2024’s general election, for example, while the Greens got one MP for every 485,000 votes. So our system considered a Labour vote to be over 20 times more valuable than a Green one. That’s why we’ve ended up with Labour dominating parliament (holding 63% of its MPs, despite getting only 33% of the votes) and Greens holding just 0.6% of MPs despite getting over 6% of the vote.

No excuse

But that doesn’t excuse the BBC‘s cancellation of Polanski’s interview at precisely the time people around the country need to hear his voice. Because as he said last week, the government is conflating opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza with last week’s synagogue attack in a dangerous attempt to suppress freedom of speech. And the BBC‘s silencing of Polanski’s voice allowed this to continue unchallenged at the worst possible time.

If they won’t highlight the Greens’ bold ideas, we will

At the Green conference, there was support for many common-sense policies. For example, as Britain’s housing crisis rolls on, the Greens pledged to get rid of private landlords. And Polanski spoke about the need to legalise drugs in order to end the disastrous ‘war on drugs’.

Amid what genocide experts, international legal scholars, and humanitarian organisations have overwhelmingly called genocide in Gaza, Green members also agreed on the need to hold the army responsible (Israel’s IDF) to account as the terrorist organisation it is:

Polanski, meanwhile, called for the government to reverse its costly and highly controversial ban on non-violent direct-action group Palestine Action.

Clearly, the BBC can’t be trusted to fairly report on the actual political alternatives people have in this country. Good thing the Canary is about to call the fuckers out.

Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Good Morning Britain

By Ed Sykes

This post was originally published on Canary.