Green Party leader Zack Polanski has finally apologised for endorsing social media criticism of police who risked their lives to arrest the Golders Green terror suspect.
Mr Polanski has been under pressure for more than 24 hours to apologise for sharing a social media post accusing officers of heavy-handedness during the incident on Wednesday.
He has been called out by Met Commissioner Mark Rowley and members of his own party in the wake of an incident which left two Jews with stab wounds.
Today Prime Minister Keir Starmer added his voice to the chorus of condemnation, after meeting the officers involved and praising their actions.
In an interview to be broadcast on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 tomorrow he said Polanski was ‘not fit to lead any political party’.
In a statement this afternoon the Green Party leader said: ‘Everyone in leadership has a responsibility for lowering the temperature at a time of such tension, and I apologise for sharing a tweet in haste.
‘Police responses to emergency situations such as these do need later reflection in the right forums, but I accept that social media is not the appropriate channel for doing so.
‘I have invited Mark Rowley to meet with me to discuss the police response and the wider issues raised in his letter.’
Mr Polanski has been under pressure for more than 24 hours to apologise for sharing a social media post accusing officers of heavy-handedness during the incident on Wednesday
Polanski retweeted a post suggesting hero policemen who disarmed the Golders Green terrorist were heavy handed
Met Police chief Sir Mark Rowley today said that he will not allow ‘misinformed’ people to ‘undermine’ the hero officers who brought down the Golders Green suspect
The Metropolitan Police tonight confirmed it had received a letter from Mr Polanski and a spokesperson said a meeting with the Green leader would take place after the local elections.
Sir Mark earlier today said that he will not allow ‘misinformed’ people like Mr Polanski to ‘undermine’ the hero officers who brought down the Golders Green suspect on Wednesday.
The head of Scotland Yard has revealed he has met the police officers who arrested Essa Suleiman in north London and they were ‘shaken’ because they feared he may have had a bomb.
Defending their response as perfectly acceptable in the circumstances, and doubling down on his criticism of Polanski, he said: ‘Unless you’ve been in that moment where you’re scared stiff and you’re confronting somebody so dangerous, it’s hard to put yourself in that situation’.
Sir Mark wrote a letter to Mr Polanski on Thursday accusing him of spouting ‘misinformed’ rhetoric when he shared a post on X that claimed the two policemen were ‘violently kicking a mentally ill man in the head’.
‘I need my officers to have confidence to tackle the most difficult and dangerous individuals’, the police chief said on TV this morning.
‘If an eminent person wants to thoughtlessly step into that and undermine their confidence to act that then I’m going to deal with that’, he said this morning.
Left wing Your Party MP for Coventry South, Zarah Sultana, accused the police chief of having a ‘brass neck’, adding: ‘As Commissioner, Mark Rowley’s job is to serve the public, not to make political attacks’.
But Mr Polanski has come under fire from within his own party for endorsing criticism of police who risked their lives to arrest the Golders Green terror suspect.
Anthony Slaughter, the leader of the Welsh Greens, said it had been ‘inappropriate’ for Mr Polanski’s to share a post on X suggesting two officers were guilty of ‘violently kicking a mentally ill man in the head’.
And Shahrar Ali, a former deputy leader of the Greens, went further and told people not to back the party in next Thursday’s local elections amid deepening anger over the Green Party leader’s actions.
‘Zack Polanski and the Green Party are trending for all the wrong reasons. I have consistently warned about his divisive brand of politics from when he first stood for leader last year,’ Mr Ali said.
It is the latest sign of unrest within Green ranks over the leftward tilt of Mr Polanski’s leadership.
Last week MP Ellie Chowns publicly distanced herself from his claim that the UK’s special relationship with Trump’s America is ‘more of a danger than what [Vladimir] Putin is doing in Ukraine’.
Speaking to the BBC today, Sir Keir said he had met the Met officers from the scene.
‘I won’t put words into their mouth, but I want everybody just to imagine what it might be like,’ he said.
‘You’re trying to arrest someone who has already attacked two people and has no regard for life. We know that tasers were fired. I know from my own experience with the police, that there are only two shots in a taser, and once you’ve shot them, there’s nothing left.
‘There’s a guy on the ground, he’s got a rucksack on. And I don’t know what was going through the mind of those officers, but if I was there, I’d be thinking, he’s going to detonate something. He’s going to blow me up and everybody around here.
‘In those circumstances, I think you can quite see why what could have gone through their mind is, we need to do whatever we can to disable this guy.’
He added: ‘Now, when I then see Zack Polanski come out and retweet or support a criticism of that, I think it’s disgraceful… He’s not fit to lead any political party.’
Health Secretary Wes Streeting called Mr Polanski’s statement ‘a mealy mouthed apology for poor timing, rather than poor judgement,’ adding: ‘Not remotely serious.’
The Liberal Democrats accused Mr Polanski of issuing a ‘cynical non-apology’.
Max Wilkinson MP, the party’s home affairs spokesperson, said: ‘It says a lot that when everyone else has been standing in solidarity with the victims and the Jewish community as a whole, his instinct was to attack the police officers who are keeping us safe.
‘Polanski should, in unambiguous terms, disown the content of the ridiculous statement he shared.’
