Green Party leader Zack Polanski has refused to apologise to Nigel Farage after sharing an Instagram image that included a man wearing a black T-shirt depicting a guillotine with the words "We're only making plans for Nigel." Instead, Polanski challenged the Reform UK leader to apologise first for putting others in danger.

Appearing on BBC Newsnight on Tuesday, July 28, 2026, Polanski said he "shared inadvertently" the image and removed it once he noticed its content. He explained that the post was "a collaboration from a photographer" containing 20 images and that he "just didn't look carefully enough" before posting it. Polanski said he "didn't pay enough attention to the T-shirt" and was "horrified" by its "dangerous message" (The Guardian).

Pressed three times during the Newsnight interview to apologise directly to Farage, Polanski declined each time (BBC News). Instead, he issued a conditional challenge: "If Nigel Farage wants to apologise for all the times that he's put other people in danger, then I'll be happy to make an apology" (The Guardian).

Polanski also claimed on Newsnight that Farage had taken the Instagram image, cropped it to make it appear as though Polanski himself had posted it, and that the cropped version received 3.2 million views (BBC Newsnight). This allegation frames the dispute not simply as a question of Polanski's social media conduct but as a two-sided political confrontation in which both leaders are accused of using the same image as a weapon against the other.

Reform UK responded by reporting Polanski to the police. Home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf accused Polanski of "inciting murder." Farage himself called for Polanski's arrest over the image. A Metropolitan police spokesperson said the force was "conducting inquiries" and took "reports of this nature extremely seriously." Polanski told Newsnight that, as of that Tuesday evening, the police had not been in contact with him (The Guardian).

Separately, The Telegraph reported that an anarchist printer removed the Farage guillotine T-shirt from sale (The Telegraph), indicating the image's circulation extended beyond Polanski's post and into commercial channels before being withdrawn.

Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden, speaking on Sky News, said there is "a duty on all politicians to be careful about what they post" and noted: "It's not the first time Zack Polanski has done something like this" (The Guardian). McFadden's reference to a pattern is grounded in a prior incident: in May 2026, Polanski apologised for sharing a post criticising the police response to the Golders Green stabbings, saying he had done so "in haste."

The broader context here is a political environment in which social media conduct by party leaders is increasingly subject to police scrutiny and cross-party censure. The Metropolitan Police's decision to confirm active inquiries, rather than dismiss the referral, places Polanski's post in a category where the threshold for investigation has been met, at least preliminarily, even if no contact with Polanski had been made at the time of his Newsnight appearance.

The episode also reveals an escalating communications dynamic between the Greens and Reform UK. Polanski's counter-allegation that Farage cropped and amplified the image to 3.2 million views shifts the frame from a one-sided lapse in judgement to a contested information operation, where both sides are accused of manipulating the same image for political gain. Whether that claim gains traction may determine whether the political damage stays concentrated on Polanski or spreads more evenly across both parties.

For Polanski, the repeated nature of the criticism, from both opponents and Labour cabinet ministers, compounds the risk. McFadden's intervention signals that the political cost is not confined to Reform UK's complaints but extends to broader parliamentary expectations of conduct. The Green leader's strategy of coupling an admission of inadvertence with a refusal to apologise and a conditional counter-demand on Farage is a calculated posture, but one that leaves little room for de-escalation if the police inquiry advances.