Polanski 2029: What Lies in Wait for the Government of Everyday Communities?

Three years on from a sweeping victory in the Gorton and Denton by-election, Polanski becomes Prime Minister, presiding over an undefeatable Green Party majority in the House of Commons. The people of Britain feel hope and vindication after prolonged stagnation. It is day one in a new era of prosperity and peace. The UK will begin healing, and all will dance happily around a maypole.

This is more-or-less the presented vision of Polanski’s Green Party in 2026. It is a kind and caring vision, yet unfortunately an incendiary one. In Polanski’s world, the wealthy are taxed, and the proceeds thereof are handed out to ordinary communities, the NHS, and youth centres. All that stands in the way are the ‘realities of governance’. 

Revisiting the lifecycles of governments-past, you could be forgiven for thinking those ‘realities’ are just so. A general pattern is visible; a charismatic centrist artfully wins elections with promises of “change”, prosperity and equity. They jubilantly arrive to face the realities of government but later fall before another charismatic centrist after their small victories along the way fail to satiate the fickle electorate. 

Starmer’s government is allegedly going through those motions, albeit in a time and context presented as unprecedented and uncertain. This seemed to give impetus to Paul Ovenden, Starmer’s former senior aide, to decry a “political perma-class” across Arms-Length Bodies, lobby groups, the Civil Service, academia, the press, and single-issue campaign groups as the root cause of this loop.

It is hard to deny this theory as conspiratorial, especially in the era of the Epstein files. Such self-interested networks can exist both as product of conscious conspiracy and/or as products of unconscious culture. It is highly probably this “perma-class” extends to include those in the worlds of finance, law, the oil industry, security, and politics.

Polanski must fully understand what he represents were he to enter 10 Downing Street or the Palace of Westminster – a threat to the “perma-class”. Polanski is a threat in a way that the “Thucydides Trap” encapsulates: a rising power creating structural tension with a hegemonic power, leading to conflict. 

Indeed, Graham Allison proclaimed the solution to the Trap lies in excellent diplomacy. Yet diplomacy is synonymous with compromise: this is no longer an option for Polanski in an era of febrile polarisation and extreme inequity. Rather than seek predictable diplomacy, as charismatic centrists of yesteryears have, Polanski is deliberately seeking conflict.

The conflict will not use arms or physical violence; instead, it will take place inside our institutions, within the psychological arena. Polanski must know that the “perma-class”, if it exists at all, will be adept in this respect. That is how they became the “perma-class”, after all; their psychological tools have allowed them to manage the aspirations of charismatic centrists while galvanising their own interests. 

The first tool which awaits Polanski is “psychological pressure”. Used over time and in intensity, pressure can force a target to yield psychologically. The CIA Human Resources Exploitation Manual recommends unsettling their target so that their emotional and cognitive patterns became “radically disrupted”, for example. 

This could be achieved through manipulating the environment of the target, creating a sense of time-pressure or urgency, generating individual hopelessness or isolation, or creating the illusion that everything on the topic is already known by the perpetrators. 

The separate, Swiss-army-knife tool of “gaslighting” is also available. It is a handy means of converting their resistant target to the role of a supportive and enabling subordinate. This tool intends to erode the “epistemological self-trust” of the target and instead make them defer to the perpetrating party. 

The perpetrator may withhold critical information, create disinformation, or overload the target with irrelevant information.  They will deny memories or established truths. They may trivialise or demean the opinions of their target, speak over them, and use the guilt or shame or fear of their target against them.

A third toolset is rhetorical devices. These tools seek to achieve a goal, such as winning an argument, by evoking emotion or aesthetics. The “Alt-Right Playbook” illuminates several such tactics used widely by right-wing groups in the past ten years. 

These can include presupposing frames in conversation, drawing targets down irrelevant lines of inquiry, making voluminous false accusations or remarks against targets, nitpicking targets’ speech or figures to distract from their central point. It can involve holding doublethink opinions when convenient, or reframing power imbalances as “not so bad”. 

A fourth, subtle tool is that of suggestion, and indeed the effect it can have at a subconscious level. Suggestion can prime a target to anticipate an outcome, and once primed, their thoughts and behaviour will be directed towards achieving that outcome. A newspaper may post stories of tragic car accidents, suggesting to audiences they may suffer the same fate in the near future and they stop driving out of fear, for example.

Suggestions can be verbal or non-verbal, direct or indirect, make use of visuals or audio, and rely on perceptions of the perpetrator. Complex suggestions, such as those from spy novels, use priming in advance of a suggestion. For example, a perpetrator may wear a particular symbol on their lapel to a meeting with the target; the target may see this symbol later in their day somewhere else, and draw a suggestion from this association, which influences the direction of their behaviour and thinking.  

The final blunt set of tools the “perma-class” may resort to are those of flattery and beguilement. Hedonistic offerings can be made to the target, such as luxurious gifts, drugs, sex, and whatever else appeals to the desires of the target. If none of these succeed, a turn to threats and physical violence are not unthinkable. 

If Polanski is to step into 10 Downing Street in 2029, these are a few of the tools of aggression awaiting him in the psychological arena. Polanski requires acute awareness of them, coupled with a strong self-discipline to resist them. He must have a team around him equally as disciplined, who share the common vision and narrative and can reinforce it in one another. 

He need recognise these tools can and will wear down their targets, who are as human as the rest of us. By prioritising policy goals now, he can implement them as soon as possible in 2029; Polanski must therefore have a detailed wealth tax policy ready to vote into law before then. Failure to do so exposes his vision to the policy contortions the psychological tools of the “perma-class” can create. Those very contortions will make or break the ability of everyday communities to fortify against their tempestuous futures.

Illustration: Will Allen/Europinion