The Golders Green incident exposed raw hypocrisy on policing, argues Herald columnist Calum Steele

As someone who is not averse to the periodic display of cynicism, I like to believe I’m pretty attuned to spotting when others similarly do so – and events a week ago today in Golders Green have provided opportunity aplenty for cynical commentary to be deployed by the bucket-load.

But the thing with cynicism is that, for it is often as rooted in a weariness towards institutional communications as it is in reality, its effectiveness as a messaging tactic only works if there are no inherent contradictions in the underlying missive in the first place.

Zac Polanski, leader of the Greens in England and Wales, was out of the traps pretty sharpish after the video of two Met police officers subduing the suspect hit the socials and news channels within minutes of the attack. His reposting on X that the officers were "repeatedly and violently kicking a mentally ill man in the head when he was already incapacitated by a stun gun" drew predictably polarised views, as is the wont of the platform, and provided a useful distraction to keep every news outlet busy through the weekend politics programmes at the very least.

Polanski of course entirely missed the point – but he didn’t miss it for the reasons Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley (more on him later) and a whole host of right-leaning politicians, publications and commentators suggested. He missed it because his lazy reposting exposed a level of hypocritical mental gymnastics that are impossible to ignore.

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