You have to feel sorry for the people of Brighton. No, seriously. In the last two weeks they’ve been subjected not just to a deluge of Lib Dems but now also the entirety of the Green party. Even for the residents of Britain’s progressive Mecca – or should that just be Mecca – that might be a bit much.

Today was the opening of the Greens’ conference. Sian Berry spoke first, with a deranged rant about the A23 and ‘showing arses’ to fascists. If we thought we’d had the full gamut of patronising nonsense, we were wrong: Hannah Spencer was on next. ‘I want to make sure that there are more people like me in Parliament,’ she cooed, which might well have been a threat.

There’s at least something faintly naive about Spencer’s breathy nervousness. Compare and contrast with the malign condescending tone of Lucy Powell, Emily Thornberry, Bridget Phillipson et al. Indeed, it was Labour who were set to be the main villains of the speech to come. Enter, stage quite far-left, Zack Polanski. 

Polanski made a gangly stroll onto the stage and waved dopily at the audience. He has the air of a character cut from initial pilots of the Inbetweeners for being too explicitly dorky. He began with a list of Green electoral successes of late, calling out congratulations to various places for being mad enough to give his colleagues a chance. ‘Go London’, he whooped unconvincingly at one point. 

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