A political row has broken out in the United Kingdom after Reform UK reported Zach Polanski of the Green Party to the police over an image he shared on social media. The party says the image amounts to incitement to murder directed at its leader, Nigel Farage, and the police have said they are making inquiries into the matter.
According to the coverage, Polanski shared a post on Instagram that contained a number of photographs. One of the images showed a man wearing a black T-shirt carrying a picture of a guillotine, which, according to the reporting, appears to call for the death of Nigel Farage. The post was shared with Polanski's more than 700,000 followers on the platform.
Farage, the Reform leader, responded publicly on the platform X. He said this was what Polanski had just posted on Instagram, arguing that if he himself were to post anything comparable he would expect to be arrested, and that Polanski should be arrested too. His comments framed the sharing of the image as a serious matter deserving of police attention.
Zia Yusuf, of Reform, went further, saying the image amounted to incitement to murder and that it should be treated as such by the police. The party's position was that the sharing of the image, whatever the circumstances behind it, had crossed a line and required a formal response from law enforcement rather than being dismissed.
Polanski responded quickly to the criticism. The Green Party, speaking on his behalf, said he had condemned the image on the T-shirt. It explained that he had been tagged in a post containing around 20 images and had clicked to accept it, sharing it to his large following without realising that there was more to it than he had initially seen.
The reporting noted that this was not the first time Polanski had shared something online and then had to retract it, saying afterwards that he had acted in haste and had not realised what the content was. On this occasion he apologised and said he absolutely did not condone what was shown on the T-shirt in the images he had shared.
The police have said they take this type of matter very seriously and that they are making their inquiries. Commentators discussing the episode described the T-shirt itself as unforgivable, while noting that people can make mistakes on social media, and said the incident had come at a time of heightened concern about the safety of public figures.