Yanks Out: Polanski captures zeitgeist in call to end US control of UK

Zack Polanski wants the US imperial machine booted out of Britain. The Green Party leader told the New Statesman that the US bases, troops and nukes need to go. He doesn’t go far enough, but it’s a start.

Polanski is not crazy

There’s a deep anti-Americanism in British culture: not necessarily against the people of the US but against the kind of Trumpian gob-shite-ery we see today. It’s time it was unleashed. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve been waiting for this since Gordon Brown sent my mates and me to Afghanistan, per chance to die, in a pointless American war. So it’s Yanks Out or bust as far as I’m concerned.

Polanski told the Statesman on 19 January:

Since being elected Green Party leader I’ve had lots of politicians attack me over my stance on Nato. Apparently, saying that the Cold War era alliance in its current form isn’t working made me naive. Calling attention to the UK’s reliance on the USA for our security made me stupid. Demanding that we make our security system fit for the threats of the 21st century made me crazy.

Now that Donald Trump is making threats to take over Greenland by force, all of that criticism seems very weak. The fact Trump is threatening economic warfare on anyone who opposes him just brings the new reality home even more.

Starmer’s responses – even today – have been absolutely sniveling. As ever, he’s tried to play every side at the same time – typical of a centrist technocrat with no ideas, no ideology and no backbone.

You can watch his latest flip-flopping speech here, if you can stomach it:

As Prime Minister, I will always act in the United Kingdom’s national interest. pic.twitter.com/ZkveFmD1R1

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) January 19, 2026

Yet in Polanski, we have politician who has at least tried to articulate what’s been hanging in the air for decades. Corbyn tried it and I’m sure he agrees today, but the Labour Party’s imperialist instincts ate him alive. You’ll remember in the end both his 2017 and 2019 manifestos ended up pledging to retain Trident and NATO membership.

And here’s some important context:

In effect, Britain is a military and economic outpost and/or colony of the United States. And it has been made so by generations of Labour and Tory governments. The fact is a Reform government would share this position. In truth, Farage’s crew might even be more sycophantic to Trump than the big British parties.

What Polanski has tried to convey is an outline of what needs to change in these chaotic times.

The real occupation of Britain

Polanski’s vision needs work – he is still playing to the Green’s centrist base over the EU and Ukraine – but the basic ideas are solid. For one, we should disentangle the UK from the US imperial security apparatus:

the government should urgently review how we can remove US bases from British soil while maintaining our own security

He said we should also get rid of the US nukes kept here on a falsehood. Namely that Trident is our own, independent arsenal:

Even proponents of nuclear weapons see the risk of having a weapons system that relies on the USA. Sadly billions have already been spent on Trident renewal, but we must not fall for a sunk-cost fallacy and should immediately pause the renewal and bring a debate to parliament on whether we want to spend billions of pounds on a weapons system that cannot operate without US support.

In fact, here is Starmer effectively admitting Trident isn’t independent just today:

Keir Starmer says our nuclear deterrent requires us to have a good relationship with the United States.

But I thought we're always told our nuclear deterrent is independent. pic.twitter.com/bqUvR39tD0

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) January 19, 2026

Polanski also demanded a proper security review which looks at existential threats likes climate change. And he said that UK defence spending shouldn’t be about pissing money away into the pockets of US arms firms:

When we talk about defence spending, these are the kinds of threats we need to assess fully, and budget for, not just acquiesce to America’s arbitrary demands for military spending that will go straight into the coffers of US arms manufacturers.

He has the essential formula down. But there’s more.

Take back control?

If you’re old enough to remember Brexit, you’ll recall how for the xenophobic right insisted we had been effectively colonised by the EU. Now there are entirely valid criticisms of the EU as a cartel of powerful northern European capitalist states, but they were never what came from Farage’s mob.

Instead, in the rhetoric of Nigel Farage, the EU controlled virtually every aspect of our lives. The fight to leave was a fight for sovereignty, to take back control, it was about invaders and occupiers, about perverse notions of ‘reverse colonisation’. But this wasn’t just a far-right fantasy backed by dark money. It was an inversion of reality. It was a long look inside the global far-right’s mirror world.

But what they never, ever mentioned how everything the accused the EU of was actually true of the US. In fact, it was worse in many cases.

Now ask yourself, does the EU have thousands of troops in Britain? Does the EU have a single military base here, let alone thirteen?! Does the EU effectively use the UK as a launch pad for its nukes? Did the EU drag us into pointless wars in Iraq or Afghanistan? Has the EU helped pull us into a genocide in Gaza? Has a genocidal European Union tech firm taken control of our health service like Palantir? Do EU spies get away scot-free when they kill our citizens as in the tragic case of young Harry Dunn?

The answer to all of these is no. But there is a country which has done or still does all those things. That country is the United States of America. And people know it full well. It’s well past time there was a space in mainstream UK politics to shape the sort of vibrant, instinctive and piss-taking anti-Americanism that Brits are known for into a political force for kicking out the US empire. Polanski’s arguments are a starting point for that.

Featured image via the Canary