Zack Polanski would doubtless have loved to win the Holborn by-election. He managed to triple the Greens' share of the vote, in a difficult seat for the party and in the midst of Labour's short Burnham honeymoon. Yet the media reaction is as one: shouldn't Polanski resign? The question isn't a question at all. It's a prompt your brain is supposed to interpret as proof he's failed, he's damaging the party, he needs to be replaced. It's intended to bypass the reality that Polanski has turned the party's fortunes around in terms of vote share and MPs, that the Greens are now a major insurgent force in UK politics, that he helped drive Starmer out of office and is driving Burnham further left than either Burnham or the Blairite Labour bureaucracy are inclined to go to win back the left. The sanctions against Israel's illegal settlements happened because of the Polanski-led Greens, not because Labour suddenly saw the light – after three years of conspiring in a genocide. The Green surge under Polanski is also driving the break-up of the cosy old two-party closed shop that has overseen the wrecking of Britain's industrial base and the economy's dependency on a financial sector whose only policy is ever-deepening austerity for you and me. Those are the reasons the political and media class want Polanski gone. And they will keep trying to short-circuit your brain into thinking that that would be good for the country rather than just for them.