Zack Polanski has said the Green party will introduce compulsory training to make it clear that antisemitism is “completely unwelcome” in the party.

He was speaking in his Today programme interview when asked about the multiple examples of Green party candidates in the local elections making antisemitic comment. Labour has attacked the Greens relentlessly over this, and today the Daily Mail has splashed on a report accusing 30 Green candidates of antisemitism.

When Nick Robinson quoted some of the worse examples to Polanski, Polanski replied:

Those messages are all unacceptable, and it’s important to condemn that.

The Green party are an anti-racist party, and it’s important that we stick to our values.

When it was put to him that the views of some candidates implied the Greens were not an anti-racist party, Polanski went on:

We’re an anti-racist party. And so what I’ve already committed to doing is making sure that we have a standardised vetting process in future, and also make sure that we have compulsory training of all our candidates to make it clear that antisemitism is completely unwelcome in the Green party, as it is in society.

It’s also important to say one case of antisemitism is one too many.

This is a handful of cases, and actually we have over 4,500 candidates, the vast, vast majority of which are doing amazing work in their communities right now.

Polanski also said this issue was not abstract for him. He is Jewish, and he said two people have been arrested in the past six weeks over threats against him.

Zack Polanski defended the Green party’s proposal to legalise hard drugs in his Today programme interview. He stressed that the policy was “to legalise and regulate, and the regulate is important”.

He told the programme

The war on drugs has clearly failed. It has failed in cities right across this country and more and more people are often taking dangerous drugs.

So, do we want people to buy them on the black market or on street corners? Or do we want people to go to a pharmacy or a medical health professional where, if they have an addiction to dangerous drugs, we can work with them to take a public health approach based on harm reduction?

Polanski said this policy would allow the police to spend more time on other problems.

A lot of police time is spent on stop and search for cannabis use, for instance. It doesn’t escape people’s notice that that is often in the politics of racism. If you’re a young black person, I think it’s something like you’re 18 times more likely to be stopped and searched than your white peer, despite the fact there’s no evidence that they’re more likely to to be dealing or using drugs.

And so I think it’s important that we make sure the police time is spent properly, which I think is about community prevention, about cohesiveness and bringing communities together.

Zack Polanski defended expressing concern about the way the suspect in the Golders Green stabbings was treated when he was arrested last week.

The Green leader has apologised for reposting a social media message implying the police used excessive force during the arrest. He said he should not have raised this issue in that way.

But, when he was interviewed on the Today programme, he said it was important for people to be treated properly, even if they had done horrific things.

When Nick Robinson, the presenter, put it to him that by reposting the controversial tweet, he was implying that he emphathised with the attacker, not the police officers, Polanski said he did not accept that. He said:

My very first response to the attack was to be horrified, as everyone was, I’m sure, and the first thing I posted was solidarity to the victim, to the family, and indeed, to people who are suffering right now.

Polanski said that he was Jewish himself, and that for Jewish people safety was not an “abstract” issue.

He went on:

Two things can be true at the same time: officers are incredibly brave when they run towards scenes of crimes that most people, including myself, will want to run away from.

At the same time, I think it is accurate, and that I was also traumatised by seeing someone handcuffed and repeatedly kicked in the head …

I think the sign of a compassionate society is how we treat people, even people who have done horrific things, because actually the way we do justice in this country is in court.

Good morning. Zack Polanski was largely unknown until he became the Green party leader in September last year and since then, as his party has soared in the polls, there has been intense scrutiny of his pre-politics career. The best-known embarrassing revelation about his past is the fact that he once told a woman he could enlarge her breasts if she listened to his hypnotherapy spiel. Nigel Farage, who also leads a dispruption party enjoying spectacular success, has scandals in his past too, and Polanski’s allies would argue that they are worse. Farage took a £5m donation from a political supporter which he did not declare, he still has not provided as good explanation as to how his partner was able to afford to buy a home in Farage’s Clacton constituency and arguably he told 30 million women that he could enlarge the size of their bank balances if they listened to his spiel on Brexit. Guardian readers can decide for themselves who is more dodgy.

But, as we tell our children, life isn’t fair. And it certainly isn’t fair for leftwing politicians campaigning in an environment where the rightwing media have considerable influence. Polanski discovered that again last night when the Times printed a story with various claims about him, of which the main one related to an allegation about his embellishing his CV. Here is our version by Jessica Elgot.

So it was not hard to guess what the first question would be when Polanski was interviewed by Nick Robinson on the Today programme a few minutes ago.

Asked why Polanski in the past said he was a spokesperson for the British Red Cross when the charity said he wasn’t, Polanski replied:

I hosted various fundraisers for the British Red Cross, and indeed I would go on stage and speak for them about the amazing work they do tackling humanitarian crises, on the climate crisis and indeed for refugees all around the world.

I used the wrong word and I accept that.

But I would essentially take words on stage with me and speak.

It’s important, though, and I accept this, [British Red Cross] don’t support any political party, and I’ve made sure [that claim has] been taken down.

Polanski attacked the Times for publishing what he described as an antisemitic cartoon of him last week. They should apologise for it, he said. And he went on:

It feels some of these stories feel like scraping the barrel to go back 10, 15 years.

I’ve had so many friends – I’m literally talking maybe 20 or 30 in the last few weeks – who have phoned me and said a Times journalist has been phoning and they’ve been desperately trying to find things about your past. They asked me lots of questions and seem disappointed that I didn’t have some juicy, dirty gossip.

There was a lot more in the interview, and I will post more from it soon.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, is campaigning in London.

10am: Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, holds an election rally.

Lunchtime: Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid Cymru leader, is campaigning in Llandudno.

Afternoon: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is campaigning in Surrey.

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