Zack Polanski has refused to apologise for sharing an image of a man wearing a t-shirt depicting a guillotine and the slogan “We’re only making plans for Nigel” – a post Nigel Farage says amounts to incitement to murder.
The Green Party leader, 43, reposted the photograph to his 713,000 Instagram followers on Monday, saying it was the fifth image in a series of 20 from a party. The t-shirt, produced by Sabcat Printing, an “anarchist co-operative” based in Manchester, was being sold for £20. The company removed it from sale on Tuesday night, with a man who gave his name as “Steve the cleaner” telling The Sun: “It is not for sale any more … We won’t be printing any more.”
“Zack Polanski refuses to apologise for sharing Farage guillotine t-shirt post, calling it a 'mistake'.”
But Polanski, who quickly deleted the post after its contents were “brought to his attention”, insisted he would not apologise for what he called an “inadvertent mistake”. In a BBC Newsnight interview, he told Victoria Derbyshire: “If I’d done it deliberately I’d be apologising but because this was a mistake … I also make sure that I condemn political violence, and also crucially I make a commitment to be better on social media.”
Pressed three times to apologise directly to Farage, Polanski refused, accusing the Reform UK leader of cropping the image to make it look as if Polanski had posted it himself – a move he called “fundamentally dishonest”. “The moment I do that, Nigel Farage would run all over social media saying he was correct about incitement to murder and this would all ramp up again,” Polanski said. “It is important that I draw a line and don’t play his game.”
Farage had earlier posted a screenshot on X, saying: “If I was to post anything as inciteful then I would expect to be arrested, and so should Polanski.” Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, Zia Yusuf, described the image as showing a “photo of man calling for the beheading of Nigel Farage” and said it could be an “incitement to murder”. Polanski has been reported to the Metropolitan Police but told the BBC he had not been contacted by officers.
Polanski himself said he had received a death threat on Tuesday, adding: “The ramping up of the language to say ‘this is incitement to murder me’ feels like that’s also putting me in a dangerous spot.” He also claimed that when he posted the image it received fewer than 1,000 likes, but that after Farage shared it, it had been seen 3.2 million times.
Asked a final time to apologise, Polanski offered a counter-condition: “If Nigel Farage wants to apologise for all the times that he’s put other people in danger then I will be happy to make an apology.”
