Sarah Vine compared Green Party leader Zach Polanski, a Jewish man, to Adolf Hitler for his stance on Gaza.
The episode opens on polling day in the Gorton and Denton by-election, presented by Helena and Stephen Methven on Novara Live. Stephen explains why any result short of a resounding Labour win would constitute a failure for Keir Starmer: a narrow win is embarrassing in a former stronghold, a loss to the Greens could trigger a leadership challenge from the left, a loss to Reform would make Labour appear to have prioritized attacking progressives over stopping the far right, and a third-place finish would likely end Starmer's tenure. Canvasser intelligence relayed by Owen Jones suggests 75% of people who had been Labour voters four weeks earlier had switched to the Greens by polling day, with tactical voting playing a significant role. Helena then presents evidence that Labour created a fictitious tactical voting organization called Tactical Choice, which produced leaflets recommending Labour as the tactical choice to stop Reform. The leaflets carried an imprint identifying them as official Labour campaign material and selectively omitted polling data that showed the Greens ahead. Green Party leader Zach Polanski responded by registering the Tactical-Choice domain and redirecting it to the Green Party website. The episode documents wider media attacks on Polanski: former Tory MP Michael Gove dismissed claims of genocide in Gaza, journalist Sarah Vine compared Polanski to Hitler on social media, and Telegraph columnist Jake Wallace-Simons used the blood libel as an analogy for Polanski's position on Israel, which Helena and Stephen both describe as deeply shocking given Polanski is a practicing Jewish man. Keir Starmer's attack on the Greens' drug policy at PMQs -- invoking his own teenage son -- is also examined, with Helena and Stephen arguing the Green policy is a regulated long-term decriminalization framework consistent with evidence from Portugal, and that Starmer deliberately misrepresented it. The episode closes with discussion of whether the Greens' communications on drug policy are clear enough to withstand political attack, and Stephen notes the 2024 Labour intake of MPs appears to have no ideology beyond personal loyalty to Starmer, making their political futures precarious.
