Green Party leader Zack Polanski has said X posts made by Graham Linehan are “totally unacceptable.”

Polanskit, 42, said he believed it was “proportionate” to arrest the ‘gender-critical’ pundit over posts made on X, formerly Twitter.

Linehan was arrested by armed police after landing at Heathrow Airport on 1 September. The 57-year-old was questioned on suspicion of inciting violence over a series of social media posts and later released on bail.

Speaking on a Wednesday (3 September) broadcast of BBC Newsnight, Polanski said that, while he didn’t understand why it took five armed officers to arrest Linehan, he felt it was “proportionate to arrest him.”

“[We know] trans people have been in the sights of the nastiness and toxicity for a long time,” he said. “I accept proportionality of police response is a conversation we need to have… I think it was proportionate to arrest him.”

In a blog post following his arrest, Linehan cited three posts he claimed investigating officers questioned him on. In one, the Father Ted co-creator said trans women who enter “female-only spaces” should be punched “in the balls”.

In another, he posted an image of a pro-trans rally, calling it a “photo you can smell.” In a follow-up post, claiming it to be the third he was questioned on, Linehan wrote: “I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. F**k ’em.”

Drawing from his own experiences, Polanski said people in politics from marginalised backgrounds or groups “get lots of abuse,” adding that this “shouldn’t” be the case.

“I recognise that women get more abuse than I do, for instance,” he said. “I get a lot of antisemitic abuse. I’m one of the few Jewish leaders in British politics. Today, a Muslim man was elected as my deputy leader, Mothin Ali. I’ve seen the amount of Islamophobia he gets.”

Polanski’s position on trans rights stands in stark contrast to that of one-half of his predecessors, Adrian Ramsay, who came under fire for avoiding answering whether he believed trans women are women.

Conversely, Polanski has routinely shown support for the trans and LGBTQ+ communities, vowing to improve trans healthcare and LGBTQ+ equality in a speech following his historic victory.

Speaking on Labour’s track record with trans healthcare, the out gay leader said: “We know Wes Streeting is determined to remove needed protections and access to healthcare. We must make sure that we are always working to improve our policy and the ways in which we communicate it – to push back at this increasingly regressive labour government.”

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