Green party leader Zack Polanski (Green Party of England and Wales). Image: Bristol Green Party Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
Green leader: “I love this place… I’ll fight for you.”
Zack Polanski was selected at a local party hustings last night (10 September). He will contest the Holborn and St Pancras byelection on the 8th October. The announcement was made by the Green Party this morning (11 September) at Kings Place in Camden.
Commenting on his selection, Zack Polanski said:
“I am proud and honoured to have been selected for a byelection in the constituency where I have lived and worked for much of the past 20 years.
“I love this place and so do the people whose doors I’ve knocked on in recent days – but it can be even better. I know times are tough in Holborn and St Pancras. My story of constant moving around flats is such a common story for Londoners – and I know many people here are really struggling right now. I’ll fight to turn this around.
“Greens are underdogs here but we have the momentum – and I know we can achieve a historic victory in one of Labour’s safest seats. We will fight a positive campaign on the issues we know people care about, and to put as much pressure as we can on Labour to lower bills, for much more affordable housing and rent controls, to reduce massive wealth inequality and to make sure Labour don’t back down on climate action by allowing more North Sea drilling.
“If elected, I will fight every day, in this constituency and in the Houses of Parliament, for the things people care about. Against injustice and on the side of ordinary people, not big money and the powerful.”
President Donald Trump attends a meeting at the White House Oval Office in Washington, DC on September 9, 2026. (Photo by White House)
“Even for the notoriously corrupt and lawless Trump, this explicit and desperate attempt to buy votes in the November election is a new low,” said one watchdog leader.
Many Democrats in Congress are on the growing list of critics calling out President Donald Trump for his Wednesday night vow to give US voters $5,000 each if they help Republicans win control of the Senate and House of Representatives—where they already have majorities—in the November midterm elections.
“Nothing says confidence like trying to bribe people for votes,” Congressman Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) quipped Thursday.
Noting the president’s jumbled response to that question, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said: “I don’t know what this even means, but I do know the reason Trump won’t give a straight answer is that he doesn’t really mean to send these checks to anyone. He has lied about this over and over again, and he’s lying now. Just like he lied when he said he would lower costs.”
Some critics highlighted other cases of Trump pledging to give Americans money, including alleged savings from the actions of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an effort spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk.
Congressman Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said: “So now it’s $5,000 bribes that Trump will never deliver to attempt to make voters forget what they are paying for gas and food. What ever happened to those promised DOGE checks? Americans are not fools, we know he lies daily.”
So after adding trillions of dollars to the national debt, driving it over an unprecedented $40 trillion, Trump now offers everyone a $5,000 political bribe (“the Trump Dividend”) if we elect Republicans to run Congress. So add another $1.3 trillion to the wreckage of this…
Blasting the president as “our pathological liar-in-chief,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also pointed to previous instances of Trump promising money, from a 10% cap on credit card interest rates to $2 for a gallon of gasoline.
“The Trump administration is not about helping working families,” the former presidential candidate stressed. “It’s about giving a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the 1% and throwing 15 million Americans off the healthcare they have.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has also sought the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, shared on social media Groundwork Collaborative’s roundup of 15 times Trump has promised a check, dividend, or rebate—and not delivered.
Some Democratic governors also took aim at Trump. California’s Gavin Newsom, who is expected to run for president in 2028, said: “After making you sicker and poorer with his war, Donald Trump now wants to buy your vote with $5,000 in taxpayer-funded blood money. The most corrupt man ever to occupy the Oval Office.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul emphasized that “Trump owes New Yorkers $13.5 billion for his illegal tariffs and hasn’t paid up.”
“Now he’s dangling $5,000 checks if Republicans win Congress. A trillion-dollar campaign bribe from a guy who doesn’t pay his bills,” she added. “Fool me once…”
It’s not just elected Democrats ripping Trump’s new pledge. Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, said in a Thursday statement that “even for the notoriously corrupt and lawless Trump, this explicit and desperate attempt to buy votes in the November election is a new low.”
“Trump knows he can’t do this, and yet he’s attempting to bribe voters with the false promise of cash to help his party win an election, which is antithetical to every principle of American democracy,” she continued. “Every Republican at the convention and across the country should loudly and vehemently denounce Trump for proposing this dangerous and transparently illegal scheme. The fact that no one has done that yet is cause for deep alarm about the future of American elections.”
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Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband outside 10 Downing Street in 2024 (Photo: Alamy)
Andy Burnham’s decision to impose trade sanctions with Israel’s illegal settlements stands in sharp contrast to this week last year when Keir Starmer welcomed Israel’s president to Downing Street.
Speaking in parliament today, UK foreign secretary Ed Miliband also announced a ban on arms exports that would “materially contribute” to the occupation of Palestine and the advertising of illegal settlement properties in Britain.
Burnham may hope he has now done enough to see off the threat to his left flank from Green party leader Zack Polanski, especially with a tight inner London by-election coming up.
The measures have received a furious reaction from Tel Aviv, with Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar announcing the closure of the UK consulate in Jerusalem.
Washington’s ambassador in Jerusalem Mike Huckabee, meanwhile, suggested British firms could now be “banned” from doing business in a number of US states.
But do Burnham’s new sanctions go far enough?
Bloomberg has already reported that British diplomats briefed US counterparts that the move is “largely symbolic” and will have “no material impact on the UK’s wider relationship with Israel on trade or security”.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.
Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey visits the UK Manufacturing Technology Centre in Coventry, September 7, 2026
JAGUAR Land Rover confirming 4,000 jobs will go took the shine off Chancellor John Healey’s claim that Britain’s economy is “turning the corner” today.
Healey’s “pre-Budget speech” suggests his own well-publicised assessment that Andy Burnham’s is a “continuity” government, rather than representing a sharp policy break from Keir Starmer, holds true.
He emphasises adherence to his predecessor Rachel Reeves’s fiscal-rules straitjacket, severely constraining government room for manoeuvre on spending. Burnham may have called for Britain to “get beyond” being “in hock to the bond market” when he was Manchester mayor but in government he runs as scared of the money men as his predecessor.
Healey’s prescription for economic growth falls under two main headings.
One, fiscal devolution, including greater tax-retention powers by local authorities, could begin to reverse the hollowing-out of local democracy we have seen since Thatcher’s day, though the specifics, which he says he will map out at the Budget, are crucial: his refusal to rule out devolution of corporation tax was worrying, since that could prompt a race to the bottom by regions hoping to attract corporate favours.
But the other repeats the tried-and-tested-to-destruction mantra of government after government: that deregulating business will spur growth.
Healey’s pledge to reduce business regulation by “25 per cent” echoes David Cameron’s notorious “bonfire of the regulations.”
These arbitrary targets encourage reckless deregulation ignoring the principle dubbed “Chesterton’s Fence” — that you should find out why a fence was put up before you tear it down.
Deregulation is responsible for atrocities like the Grenfell Tower blaze and outrages like the poisoning of our rivers and coastlines by privatised water companies exploiting the lax “operator self-monitoring” system so effectively skewered in Channel 4’s Dirty Business drama. Indeed, deregulation of the banking sector allowed the high-risk lending and speculation that exploded in the 2008 bankers’ crash, which prompted the long squeeze on wages and cuts to public services which Healey laments.
Given how far trade unions’ hopes in this government are tied up with the Employment Rights Act, key provisions of which we’re still waiting on and which is already heavily diluted from the original New Deal for Workers, we need clarity on what Healey means by reducing the regulatory burden on business, particularly since he lists “labour costs” as part of that burden.
He also objects to “planning constraints,” and specifies that changes to judicial review rules already applied to energy projects, which reduce the scope to challenge them legally, will be extended to “all major infrastructure.” The government classifies the energy and water-intensive, and overwhelmingly US-owned, data centres springing up on our land as “critical national infrastructure” — will we lose our limited democratic power to fight these?
Aside from the risk that deregulation will weaken worker, consumer and public protections, the notion that letting corporations do whatever they want will lead to growth ignores the underlying weaknesses behind Britain’s low levels of private-sector investment.
A corporate culture that prioritises short-term profit over long-term sustainability is actually the result of under-regulation, especially when it comes to allowing private equity to buy up British businesses and services.
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR’s) problems include the frankly hostile trade policy of the United States and its tariffs, but also the transition to electric vehicles. Tories cite government targets for production of electric cars as a burden on the business — as if petrol cars have an indefinite future. But JLR’s plummeting sales in China are down to consumer preferences shifting towards electric cars. Investment in accelerating the transition to renewables, as we have seen in China, is the route to more competitive exports.
A clear judgement on the new Chancellor’s approach must wait for the Budget. But the signs so far are that the crippling misapprehensions of the last government are shared by its successor.
As the latest UNEP reports we will blow past 1.5°C, we must prioritise solutions that work, rather than focusing on complex, unproven technologies
For anyone who’s been paying attention, it’s no surprise that the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) reports that we will now inevitably blow past the global average temperature threshold of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Climate scientists like myself have been warning for years that we are about to cross this invisible red line, while quietly worrying that global average temperatures will end up being double that. Personally, I said goodbye to 1.5°C several years ago, but it still feels momentous to see it written in print, and that too by the UN.
The target to keep warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures isn’t some hard red line in the sand, because all warming carries some risk, but it’s relevant because limiting warming to 1.5°C gives us a good chance of avoiding some of the worst impacts of climate heating. We’ve already had a glimpse of what this looks like in the myriad heatwaves, wildfires, floods, droughts and storms that have made headlines this year.
Every tenth of a degree of heating means real-terms impacts for peoples’ lives, livelihoods and property, and increases the risk of the extreme events that we’ve already seen tragically claim so many lives. It also increases the likelihood of exceeding critical tipping points such as the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, beyond which there’s no return.
We’ve already had single years that have exceeded the 1.5°C limit, but the widely discussed Paris Agreement target is a multi-year average. That means we won’t know we’ve reached it until it’s in the rearview mirror, but it’s also possible to “overshoot” 1.5°C, temporarily peak at higher temperatures, and then bring them back down – and that’s now the best-case scenario outlined by UNEP.
This would mean we would have to take drastic action to bring temperatures back down again rather than continuing to drive them ever upwards. Which, in the current political climate, feels like a bit of a stretch.
Temperatures won’t stabilise until we reach net zero emissions, where we remove as much carbon from the atmosphere as we add to it. Until then, we will still be increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere and turning up the dial on the thermostat. Net zero isn’t a nice to have, despite what certain parts of the political spectrum would have you believe, it’s an essential if we want to have a liveable planet.
In fact, UNEP’s latest report points to the need to take action beyond net zero:
Once we have limited heating to 2°C or below — which currently feels optimistic — we will have to roll out carbon dioxide removal (CDR) to reduce temperatures on an enormous scale.
CDR often connotes high-tech solutions to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, but it can also mean one of the oldest technologies in the world: trees. That’s why restoring nature and preventing deforestation is so important for climate action.
But UNEP reports that CDR only works if we limit heating to 2C or below. As the stakes of climate heating continue to rise, another idea is moving from the sidelines to centre-stage: geoengineering, or deliberate technological interventions to alter the Earth’s climate.
Geoengineering is a spectrum, ranging from the comparatively reasonable and well-researched (injecting particles into the stratosphere to reflect incoming sunlight and cool the surface, much like major volcanic eruptions have done) to downright barmy (launching mirrors into space – you can imagine which silicon valley billionaires love that idea). And while there are sensible (if heated) scientific discussions about how to actually do it, there are also some very serious ethical and governance hurdles to overcome.
The tech bros will tell you that geoengineering will save us and allow us to keep doing what we’re doing while still ‘fixing’ climate change. But beware any arguments that downplay the importance of emissions cuts. We can’t simply geoengineer our way out of this crisis.
For example: who decides when to deploy? What happens if an intervention makes things better for some and worse for others? How do we safeguard against bad actors acting unilaterally? These questions are largely unanswered, and that’s before we get to the scientific questions around unintended consequences, like disrupting the Arctic food chain while trying to refreeze ice, or what happens if we stop the intervention, resulting in a so-called termination shock, where temperatures would shoot back up with devastating effect.
In some senses the climate crisis is relatively simple: we’re pumping planet-heating carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and it’s heating the planet. To reverse it, we need first to stop adding planet-heating carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and then to start removing it.
The good news is that we do know what we need to do to achieve that. Climate action is less a knowledge problem, and more an implementation one.
Proponents of geoengineering argue that it’s not an either/or between emissions cuts and major interventions. But in a world with finite resources, expensive and unproven geoengineering solutions should not be a priority, rather, we should prioritise the simple stuff we know works: decarbonising energy production, improving public transport, retrofitting and building greener housing, reducing meat and dairy consumption, restoring natural ecosystems.
That said, we are now committed to some level of change, and we need to behave as such. That means we need to prepare for the sea level rise that’s to come, and adapt societies, behaviours and infrastructure to a less predictable and more extreme climate.
If the summer of 2026 has taught us anything in the UK, it’s that our houses, schools, offices, railways, emergency services, power networks and public transport are simply not fit for purpose in the heat. Nor are they built to withstand the wet, stormy, flood-prone autumn and winter that is on its way. We’re not equipped to deal with the rapidly extremifying climate or the weather whiplash it brings. Simply put: our infrastructure was built for a climate that no longer exists.
If we are to survive the coming decades, we need to build preparedness and climate resilience into our society. Extreme events are already exposing our vulnerabilities, and if we thought 2026 was bad, count my words: we ain’t seen nothing yet.
In the wake of our hottest summer on record, it’s abundantly clear that we need to slash emissions to save lives, and at the same time prepare for the changes that are now committed.
The geoengineers are right about one thing: It’s not an either/or. We have to reduce emissions to net zero and remove carbon from the atmosphere and adapt to what’s in store. There’s no other safe option.
Dr. Ella Gilbert is a climate scientist and multi-award-winning presenter with a PhD in Antarctic climate change.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey visits the UK Manufacturing Technology Centre in Coventry, September 7, 2026
