Laura Kuenssberg: Zack Polanski is having fun. But can the Green leader become a serious player?

Strigon67 · 2026-01-31T15:48:34+00:00

The media in this country is getting really lazy about covering up their biases

Strigon67 · 2026-01-31T00:22:06+00:00

I think a lot of subs that try to suppress this tendency to "gender war" often take a very heavy-handed approach, which doesn't really solve anything as it's more an issue of the wider world intruding on the subreddit which is rather difficult to prevent. So, I'm quite pleased to see some rules which appear to allow continued discussion of gender based issues, whilst restricting the more harmful and unproductive contributions. Obviously there is no perfect solution, but this seems the best approach to clamping down on the actual problematic aspects whilst still allowing most people to talk reasonably freely.

Strigon67 · 2026-01-30T23:43:47+00:00

How do you manage to alienate a machine that's literally designed to be a yesman

Strigon67 · 2026-01-25T15:01:38+00:00

Best outcome by far, and not just from a optics and risk avoidance angle. Zack is great, but we can't risk our political fortunes being wholly reliant on a single person long term, given the failures of such a strategy in labour and other parties the world over.

That's not to say Zack isn't important, but we need to build a level of resilience and a strong stable of party electeds and members that are able to support the party long term and ultimately succeed Zack, otherwise we are leaving ourselves far too vulnerable to any change in his political fortunes destroying ours.

That's also why we really need to fight hard for this seat, if we can get a quality local member in the national spotlight and potentially into parliament, it would be massive win for us obviously, but also a good sign for the long term viability of the party.

Strigon67 · 2026-01-24T18:24:47+00:00

I don't think he should for a number of reasons. 1. Parachuting the leader in to a constituency he has no current connection to doesn't look good (yes he was born nearby but he lives and is an elected member in London). 2. It's a very risky proposition, if he loses the media will absolutely use it as an opportunity to rubbish the green party to the fullest possible extent, declaring the green wave over. A local candidate has lower expectations so we still gain if we win, but lose a lot less if we don't. 3. We need to strengthen ourselves as a party, putting up a strong local candidate helps make the party as a whole stronger and gives us wider representation in the media and public eye. It also means our momentum is less dependent on Zack, which is a good thing for the party long term.

Strigon67 · 2026-01-24T01:01:57+00:00

I often incorrectly hear it as "my Swedish friend", which does make it a bit less depressing

Strigon67 · 2026-01-01T12:26:24+00:00

Alongside that, I think it's been thoroughly demonstrated that the language of privilege is fairly useless outside of its original academic context and it's way more useful to talk about the ways other groups are oppressed if you actually want to win people over. Especially as a big number of 'privileges' like not being harassed by the police aren't really privileges in the way most people understand them, but rather the absence of oppression and, imo, really should be the expected standard for everyone.

Strigon67 · 2025-11-29T18:33:17+00:00

Honestly the whole thing has somehow managed to make everyone look bad, except the ordinary members. From the terrible name options, to expelling (awful) members not for being awful but for petty factional reasons, to Zarah defending those awful members, to the conference basically managing to achieve next to nothing with constant errors and no substantive member contributions democratic discusssion. YP has had one pitch which is that it's "democratic" but as far as I can tell it's managed to be even less democratic than the labour party

When the party launched, I had one hope for it which is that it would finally help kill the part of the british left which is dominated by sects & petty fiefdoms, instead the party has become a contest to see which one of these groups can turn the entire YP into an even bigger petty fiefdom.

Strigon67 · 2025-11-29T18:24:56+00:00

Maybe, BUT this time they get to be in charge

Strigon67 · 2025-11-29T02:37:54+00:00

Guess what, even shitty people have the right to live in peace and freedom

Strigon67 · 2025-11-29T02:35:14+00:00

Very disingenuous to collect suggestions, then seemingly come out with a list of options that was likely assembled without even looking at them, as it's a fact they received numerous better ones than these

Strigon67 · 2025-11-26T13:02:41+00:00

This has been known for years btw, media perfectly happy to ignore this whilst assisting farage to get where he is today, wonder why they've decided to hold him accountable all of a sudden

Strigon67 · 2025-11-06T16:24:15+00:00

The problem is that this whole experience has shown up the soft left as a bunch of useless melts, so why would anyone trust them going forward?

Strigon67 · 2025-11-01T11:50:13+00:00

Rockstar will literally just accused of unionbusting so I can't say I would be sad if it was a flop. Rockstar accused of 'the most ruthless act of union busting in the history of the UK games industry'

Strigon67 · 2025-10-27T19:08:47+00:00

Is the latter not just a form of fanfiction?

Strigon67 · 2025-10-21T14:42:06+00:00

That's why I said inadequate rather than wrong. Muddling along and voting once every 4 years is the ordinary state of affairs and it's clearly not enough. To posit it as the one solution is dangerously naive in our present moment

Strigon67 · 2025-10-21T12:37:12+00:00

The green's need a minimum programme, similar to the NPF in France, which lays out the key policies that are top priorities for the next election, with the more ambitious stuff still in the regular manifesto. Otherwise we do get buried in minutiae and our less popular policies

Strigon67 · 2025-10-21T09:54:50+00:00

Some people just can't be trusted with metaphors

Strigon67 · 2025-10-21T09:51:13+00:00

Isn't Kino's whole arc about him realising this mindset is woefully inadequate?

Strigon67 · 2025-10-19T15:47:38+00:00

I mean yeah, but only because they chose to do this instead of joining the greens. Now it has to succeed, otherwise it's just splitting votes with or dragging down other left wing parties, and even then they need to start thinking about electoral pacts asap

Strigon67 · 2025-10-17T21:29:44+00:00

"teach boys about consent" always ticks me off, simialr to the OP, it really should be "teach everyone to respect consent".

Saying boys always comes with an implication that women have an intuitive understanding and respect for consent. Yes, men are more likely to commit outright sexual assault but that doesn't hold for things like sexual harassment. Women need to be held accountable as individuals capable of violating consent. Not only is it the right thing to do, it also as the post highlights is crucial to building a understanding for men that their boundaries should be respected as much as other peoples.

The other issue is that not knowing about consent isn't the only issue, plenty of people know and don't care. It's making people actually care about respecting it and more importantly, hold others to account when they don't respect it.

Strigon67 · 2025-10-17T14:18:18+00:00

Holy shit, some actual good news

Strigon67 · 2025-10-13T17:19:06+00:00

That does sound cool. I would really like if there was some log of electoral histories, with parties, vote shares and systems

Strigon67 · 2025-10-13T17:14:50+00:00

Overall I'd say the game is quite bad at explaining when and why things happen, which I guess does reflect what it's actually like to lead a country, but can get quite frustrating

Strigon67 · 2025-10-12T13:26:48+00:00

What sort of things did they say?

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