Labour Kept Smearing Polanski - Now It's All Blown Up In Starmer's Face

Towns to Reform. Cities to the Greens. Wales to Plaid. Scotland to the SNP. Starmer says he's staying. Drop a comment. Right, so Keir Starmer has just lost roughly 1,400 councillors, 37 councils, control of Wales, any pretence of recovery in Scotland, and 33 of his own backbenchers at current count, and yet he is still standing at the lectern telling the country he is not going anywhere. [CLIP] Those words I hope are now haunting him, because we left, we went elsewhere, we punished you as a result, yet you still won’t leave. Labour spent the run-up to these elections running an anti-Green operation. Their messaging was almost entirely about the Greens. Their attack lines were almost entirely about Zack Polanski, the man elected Green Party leader in September last year, who became the focus of weeks of antisemitism accusations from Labour-aligned voices in the press and on social media. And on Thursday, with the smears still echoing, the Greens took Hackney, Hastings, Lewisham, and Waltham Forest, with five councils still to declare at time of writing it must be said. They came second on the BBC's projected national share, ahead of Labour. Polanski personally wasn't on a ballot anywhere, but every council the Greens took, every mayor they elected, every percentage point they put on Labour, lands as his vindication and Starmer's bill arriving.