Labour thought Putin would save them from Zack Polanski; instead it made itself look more terrified of the Greens...and teenagers too apparently! Right, so Labour thought Putin would do the job for them. That is the blunt shape of this latest little stunt, because Labour’s official account has taken a comment by zack Polanski, stuck it on a poster with bombed out images of Mariupol in Ukraine behind it, and tried to turn a Green leader who called Putin horrendous into somebody supposedly soft on Russia. Here is the poster itself. The quote they used does not even hide the problem for them, because the words “as horrendous as Putin is” are sitting there in the attack itself, doing the work Labour’s smear needs the viewer not to notice. This poster is not some random crank with a flag emoji having a tantrum in the replies. It is the party machine choosing to spend its time making a Green opponent look contaminated by Putin, while the Greens are rising, young voters are drifting, and speaking of, Labour MPs are now reportedly getting very nervous about giving sixteen and seventeen year olds the vote before the next general election. And that is the whole thing sitting there in a single campaign object, Mariupol used as backdrop, Polanski used as target, and Labour’s Green problem is what actually gets left on the poster. Zack Polanski’s actual answer came after he was pressed on Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, and the bit Labour wants to turn into a scandal is not a defence of Putin.