Burnham is laughing to top of the polls while Greens and Reform battle it out

It’s been a rough few months for Nigel Farage, for reasons that have generated plenty of coverage in the media.

There’s the £5 million ‘gift’ from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne. The support from convicted fraudster George Cottrell. The two separate parliamentary standards investigations. The decision to force a by-election in Clacton, which seemed to quickly backfire.

But arguably, things have been nearly as tough for Green Party leader Zack Polanski.

He gave his party a significant boost in the polls after being named leader in September last year, but stirred fierce backlash in April when he shared a social media post criticising the police who responded to the Golders Green attack.

And since then… we haven’t heard much. The headline-grabbing that followed his election has fizzled out, while his weak favourability – as tracked by YouGov – remains roughly the same as post-Golders Green.

He and Farage might share a weary sigh over the old Oscar Wilde quote: the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

Until, that is, yesterday.

Polanski’s name leapt back into the news after he shared an Instagram post which included an image of a man wearing a T-shirt with a guillotine and the slogan ‘we’re only making plans for Nigel’.

Even in the most generous interpretation of events, this represents a spectacular failure from a major party leader to check what was going up on his social media.

A spokesperson for the Green Party said the leader ‘was tagged in a post with 20 images and clicked accept without realising there was more to it than he had seen’, adding that he ‘condemns’ the T-shirt graphic.

The furious response from Reform UK was unsurprising, particularly as the party continues to process the horrific, brutal death of its prominent spokeswoman Ann Widdecombe earlier this month.

Reform has reported Polanski to the police, with home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf dramatically declaring: ‘If Zack Polanski is not in police custody by this time tomorrow, the Police will have declared open season on Members of Parliament.’

(Those words might have more weight if his party did not lionise Lucy Connolly, who was jailed for tweeting that migrants should be burned alive, and invite her to speak at their conference.)

Yesterday, the Met confirmed it had received a report, adding: ‘We take reports of this nature extremely seriously, and officers are conducting enquiries into the matter.’

The background to this clash is illustrated by a couple of polls that have been published in the past 24 hours.

Pollsters More in Common and Survation both show Labour has overtaken Reform at the top of the polls, following Andy Burnham’s first week as Prime Minister.

It is the first time Farage’s party has been knocked off the top spot for well over a year, suggesting Labour MPs may have been right to dump Sir Keir Starmer as their leader – though of course, it remains to be seen how the numbers will settle when Burnham’s honeymoon wears off.

And what about the Greens? Survation has them on 10%, tied with the Liberal Democrats a full 11 points behind the third-placed Tories. More in Common, meanwhile, puts them in distant fifth place with a dire 8%.

We’ve certainly come a long way from the brief period in spring when Polanski’s party managed to overtake both Labour and the Tories to claim second place in a number of polls.

For now, you get the sense Burnham is happy to let the two of them brawl in the background while he captures all the attention with his policy announcements.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.