Zack Polanski Is a Post-Literate Politician

The influencer politician cannot understand the substance of policy

ALEX YATES

Since electing Zack Polanski as leader this September, the Green Party of England and Wales has experienced a meteoric rise in both the polls and in membership. YouGov has the Greens now consistently poll fourth nationally, and they are by far the most popular party with 18- to 24-year-olds, polling at an astounding 43 percent, almost double the next closest party, Labour with 22 percent. Following the shambolic founding of Your Party, and with the Labour government’s constant decline in popularity looking unlikely to abate, the Greens look set to become the premier party on the British left.

Polanski is best understood as someone made in the mould of a political influencer

The growth of the Greens under Polanski has been all the more impressive given their new leader is not even an MP, has no notable national political experience, nor any longstanding background in politics or policy prior to his rapid ascent to leadership. What he does have, though, is a strong hold over the medium set to dominate and sway democratic politics of the future: short-form video. Polanski is best understood as someone made in the mould of a political influencer, rather than a politician in the traditional sense. Indeed, he may well be offering a worrying glimpse into the future of Britain’s politics, in which soundbites and slogans replace detailed policy, algorithmic mastery is prized over administrative competence, and political platforms are assembled on the basis of half-understood ideas picked up online.

Polanski’s enormous popularity among the young is a sign of our politics adapting to what James Marriott has termed the “post-literate society” — one in which passively watching screens has replaced reading as our way to source information, and frazzled attention spans no longer have the capacity to engage with complex ideas in any depth beyond a couple minute video. With young people at the forefront of this decline, Polanski has been able to tap into this transition by standing on a platform that is perfectly suited to short-term videos, being comprised of memorable slogans and anecdotes that sound intuitively helpful for the problems we face, but quickly become undone if a modicum of critical thinking or further inquiry is undertaken. Before that point, though, the viewer’s attention has already scrolled away.

Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s recently elected democratic socialist mayor, mastered this strategy during his campaign as he put out sleek, punchy short videos announcing policies that sound great at first glance, like his pledge to abolish bus fares. He promises better buses — and for free! What’s not to like? Thoughtful objections were mostly confined to long-form blog rebuttals by some transport policy wonk outlining how free fares are counterproductive to delivering a better overall service, but who has time for that? The slogan is simple, easy to understand, directly makes your life better, and shows that he is on your side.

Polanski mirrors this strategy almost exactly to push his main selling points, like a wealth tax or the introduction of rent controls. Especially for a young electorate which has no living memory of these policies being enacted, they sound like the obvious answers to vexing issues. For the precarious renter that has struggled through repeated rent increases, a pledge to legally mandate an end to further rent increases sounds like an obvious solution — it makes intuitive sense. Theories and evidence of the negative distortionary effects of such policies never occur, and are unlikely to pop up on the same feed as a Polanski video making the policy seem self-evident.

There are still media in which the influencer occupying the role of politician can become undone, such as longer form interviews where ideas are expected to be outlined in their totality, rather than as snappy slogans. Polanski thereby found himself the butt of significant ridicule following his appearance on The Rest Is Politics podcast, where he incorrectly answered even basic questions on Britain’s economy and seemed to have no real idea on what he wanted to do with the economy beyond his usual slogans (wealth tax now, capitalism is bad, neoliberalism is bad, and other such illuminatingly original ideas).

The underlying reason for his shallowness of thinking was revealed when he was offered the opportunity to list the economists his ideas were being informed by, and he proffered Grace Blakeley (a journalist), Richard Murphy (an accountant), Gary Stevenson (a YouTuber) and James Meadway (at last, an actual economist!). What these individuals have in common is they have large online followings and get most of their exposure from social media, which is likely where Polanski discovered their “brilliant” insights. In the short-form video age, not only do voters only get their ideas from social media clips, but so too do the politicians.

The failure of the influencer politician to grapple with the more mundane but consequential aspects of politics was on full display when Polanski partook in the BBC’s The Today Debate special on taxes. Whilst the panel bored the audience by outlining various tax raising measures, such as changing capital gains tax thresholds (yawn!) or increasing public sector productivity (how dull!), Polanski used his interjections to constantly denounce “multi-millionaires and billionaires” and call for his solution to all the country’s ills: a wealth tax.

Don’t believe everything you see online — and remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is

The episode made for bizarre listening, as Polanski seemed to function like an automaton with pre-set phrases repeated regardless of the question at hand. It was as if one of the short-form videos would randomly start playing, such as when former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt argued the best way to pay for greater spending was through economic growth, to which Polanski went on a tangent over GDP’s inadequacy as a measure of well-being, informing us that more important measures like people’s overall mental health is what we should be concentrating on. Which is wonderful, but for the fact that the question was about how to fund spending commitments. Unless public sector workers will henceforth be paid in mental health tokens, it’s not clear how Polanski’s interjection was in any way relevant to the issue of funding state spending. The approving audience applause came nonetheless.

In an era of influencer politicians, such inadequacies may matter ever less to an electorate whose attention is elsewhere. Even podcasts — a medium that promised long-form, uninterrupted discussions in which ideas could be dissected in detail — have increasingly transitioned to a video based medium whose utility is providing spliceable clips that may go viral on short-form social media sites, meaning that faux pas can be conveniently cut and rebuttals silenced. So as politicians and influencers converge into one, it is worth heeding the warning we were once given as children: don’t believe everything you see online — and remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

---

This article (Zack Polanski is a post-literate politician) was created and published by The Critic and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Alex Yates