Tag Archives: edinburgh fringe

My weekend at the Edinburgh fringe continued with Iain Dale’s All Talk event with the Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, Zack Polanski.

I’m usually one of the younger people at Iain Dale’s shows. This time I felt positively geriatric. The audience was very young. The event didn’t have to be moved to the bigger theatre, like Nicola Sturgeon’s earlier that day, but the smaller theatre was full.

Polanski talked about his decision to change his name to one that reflects his Jewish heritage. He had thought originally that his family had changed their surname because of the persecution they faced in Nazi Germany. In fact, he said, it was because of anti-semitism in the UK.

He also talked about the tensions of his childhood and the impact of his parents’ messy divorce had on him.

I found it quite strange that someone who has barely been out of the public eye in the past year spent a good while whinging, Lib Dem style, about the Greens not getting decent media coverage. He said that he was frequently booked to appear on shows, cancelled at the last minute and the same stations would run stories about how he had disappeared.  He did say that Sky and LBC (two of the biggest broadcasters in the UK) were better at giving them a fairer amount of coverage, which feels like more than we get.

The impact of being in the public eye, though, had taken its toll on him and his partner. He talked about his housemates being worried for their safety because of his presence and his decision not to go on the electoral roll because he was worried about his address being circulated to all political parties.  It is awful that any politician should have that sort of fear and that those around them felt threatened.