Zack Polanski: An Imposter for Our Time.

Another day. Another revelation.

Yesterday, Zack Polanski admitted he’d lied about being a spokesman for the Red Cross when he campaigned to become leader of the Greens. “I did not use the right word,” he mumbled.

You’d think he might have noticed his mistake given he first made the claim in 2020. He’s also had to acknowledge he was never a fully accredited hypnotherapist.

Whether it was his offer to increase women’s breast size using hypnosis that hindered his registration remains a mystery. Polanski has been caught out telling so many lies about this episode he’s been dubbed ‘Walter Titty’.

For months Polanski insisted he’d apologised on the BBC immediately after The Sun’s exposé of his boob-boosting ‘therapy’ in 2013.

Only for the story to fall apart in March when the BBC revealed they’d found a recording of the interview in which Polanski insisted his ‘titnotherapy’ really did work. He’d doubled down. Or Double D downed you might say.

Polanski is hardly the first politician to tell porkies. Ask Keir Starmer, son of a tool-maker whose parents couldn’t afford to pay the heating if you want to know more about that. Yet the sheer shamelessness of Polanski’s deceit is remarkable.

Whether it’s the alleged failure to pay council tax on his houseboat…..

…or his schizophrenic attitude towards Jew hate.

One minute he labels his critics antisemitic. The next he’s complaining about cops behaving in a beastly fashion when arresting a man accused of stabbing two Jews.

What on earth is going on inside Zack Polanski’s head?

And might his obvious disregard for the truth explain his adoption of policies disconnected from factual reality?

I suspect the answer to those questions may have been staring us in the face all along. It’s in the name.

Ever since he rose to prominence Polanski has made no secret of the fact he changed his name. Born David Paulden at the age of eighteen he changed his name in part, he said, to honour his Jewish heritage. His Polanski ancestors who hailed from Latvia had anglicised their surname when they emigrated to the UK.

There’s obviously nothing wrong with honouring one’s heritage and many Jewish commentators have defended Polanski against the accusation he changed his name merely to sound more ‘exotic’.

That said it’s hard to deny Zack Polanski sounds more exciting than David Paulden. What his defenders have universally failed to do though is question Polanski’s choice of a new first name. David being a perfectly good Jewish name after all. As the Bible will attest.

Let me tell you the extraordinary story behind Polanski’s choice of name. As far as I know it’s one no-one else has bothered to explore.

Meet the eight year old boy the leader of the Greens named himself after.

Zacharias Wrench, or Zach for short, is a character in a children’s book aimed at 10-14 year olds. A movie based on the book appeared in 1998 just three years before the young David Paulden adopted the name Zack in honour of this imaginary lad.

It was a choice that provides startling insights into the mind of a man who has transformed British politics.