Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[mongers]

Lol I had no idea the progressives' latest saviiur, Polanski, was advocating for breast expansion by hypnosis.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/09/zack-polanski-politics-green-party-leader

Not unhinged at all.

Shelf will be gutted that he made a major misstep last week, by changing his mind about appearing on 'Have I Got News For You' the show that gave Boris his first national exposure and from subsequent appearances on it, endeared himself with large sections of the voting public.

[Jacob]

I mean breast expanding hypnosis is pretty weird, sure, but that Guardian piece just seems like a "I'm not woke myself, but THIS is what woke people should be mad about! Why aren't they mad about the thing I think they should be mad about? Bunch of hypocrites! How can this guy be good when the people who like him should hate him according to me!" attack by a partisan of another party.

[Tamas]

Yeah as far Marina Hyde articles go (I like her) this is very weak. But still.

[Jacob]

Yeah as far Marina Hyde articles go (I like her) this is very weak. But still.

Yeah I don't have an opinion on the Greens, Polanski, or Hyde for that matter. So she may still be making a decent point. I guess the real question is the degree to which this is "the one weird thing from the past" (in which case it really doesn't matter IMO), or whether it's indicative of a deeper strain of weirdness that will come out should Polanski get political influence.

[Josquius]

Hypnoboobs is one the main smears about him. Back when the Greens were having their leadership election I heard about this one and as I wasn't really following the election for a long while it was all I knew about him.

His explanation for it makes sense and seems reasonable enough. He was working as a regular hypnotherapist and some tabloid journalist decided they wanted to put a fun angle on it so asked him if he could hypnotise their boobs bigger to which iirc he said he'd give it a shot.

The way I first saw it presented was he was himself pushing hypnotising boobs bigger as a thing he was eager to do and it would work. I also didn't know he was gay at the time so all sounded extra sleazy.

The other main empty attack you hear is the name change one. And his explanation again sounds a lot more reasonable than Yaxley Lenon.

He's been getting some more reasonable attacks lately though about his favourite economists. Also I'm not a fan of his definition of populist.

[Sheilbh]

Shelf will be gutted that he made a major misstep last week, by changing his mind about appearing on 'Have I Got News For You' the show that gave Boris his first national exposure and from subsequent appearances on it, endeared himself with large sections of the voting public.

Wut?

On the Hyde piece. I like Marina Hyde and I think she's basically right, particularly this point:

Listen, nobody's perfect. People have always held their nose at aspects of politicians' characters in order to be able to put a cross in one box or another. But across the political spectrum in recent years, that sort of realistic clearsightedness has evaporated in favour of something much more like stan culture, where your idol has to be ferociously defended even when they're in the wrong, simply because they're your idol. In fact, because they're your idol, they are axiomatically incapable of being in the wrong. This tendency is most definitely not limited to the left of that spectrum – you get it with Donald Trump or Nigel Farage or anyone whose supporters frequently refuse to be honest with themselves in the face of inconvenient revelations. But these are dangerous waters for a political culture. Wilful blindness enables bad politics.

I've said before and I think it was true of Corbyn too - as well as those obvious examples on the right - that we seem to be in fan/stan culture territory towards (some) political leaders. The point on it that worries me is that I think it is intrinsically personalist rather than ideological, or about a shared agenda. But I think it is where Hyde is quite useful as she started as an entertainment writer and I think we are in an age when understanding how sports or celebrity fandoms work is pretty useful in understanding our politics. Many of the strongest supporters have their support for, say, Corbyn or Trump as core a part of their identity as a sports fan or a Swiftie - which makes persuasion impossible. How do you try to convince Jos to abandon Sunderland, say?

FWIW I think she's also right. Does it matter - probably not (personally I think his previous history performing in the Liberal Democrat Glee Club is significantly more disqualifying on multiple counts). It's been known for a while. People who like Polanski won't care. People who don't like Polanski will probably make a nickname out of it because it is quite funny. People who haven't heard of him yet will probably respond based on how they react to Polanski more generally. I have no doubt that people who would make a lot of jokes about a Reform candidate with a history of hypnotherapeautic boob-growth will be quite po-faced about this and vice versa.

I'd add that like Hyde I also have a lot of problems with the argument that we need immigration to have a class of lower-paid people to do "demeaning" jobs. And again I have wider issues with the way we as a society treat those who need care - whether elderly or because of disabilities - so I don't like his framing on that. On both of those points I find the framing pretty morally repugnant - we don't value or respect the weak or the people who care for them (naively I had genuinely hoped covid was a break in how we perceive work). But I think on both points it's not specific to him - although I think it is sort of adjacent to the Little Britain/Benefit Street era contempt for the poor.