Who are Poland’s victorious Law and Justice party, and what do they want?By Charles Crawford
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/11954733/Who-are-Polands-victorious-Law-and-Justice-party-and-what-do-they-want.html
Usually denounced as nutty Catholic right-wingers, Law and Justice are in fact a sui generis movement of truculent, carefully Eurosceptic étatist-patriots.
Charles Crawford was the British Ambassador to Poland from 2003– 2007
The official results are not yet out. But it is clear that Poland’s 2015 Parliamentary elections have given the Law and Justice party led by Jarosław Kaczynski a thumping victory, with up to 40 per cent of the vote. Depending on the final numbers and how many smaller parties squeeze over the 5 per cent threshold into parliament, Law and Justice could have an absolute majority in the Sejm, the first time any party has achieved that since communism ended 25 years ago.
The scandal-ridden pro-EU Citizens Platform party that has presided over one of Europe’s most successful economies for eight years saw its vote slump from 39 per cent in 2011 to 24 per cent this time round. A maverick party led by a Paweł Kukiz that favours the UK first-past-the-post election system achieved a respectable 9 per cent. (Imagine rock guitarist Brian May of Queen galumphing around UK politics as an idiosyncratic conservative, and you’ll get a rough idea). The motley Kukiz MPs will find it easy to work with Law and Justice.
Conservative Law and Justice candidate for the Prime Minister Beata Szydlo speaks during the general election in Poland at the party’s headquarters in Warsaw Photo: AP
The various parties representing Poland’s post-communist Left have collectively collapsed. Back in 2001, the former communists as the Democratic Left Alliance dominated Poland’s political scene. Now after successive unconvincing rebrandings and plenty of their own scandals, they have slumped to the point of disappearing from Parliament.
So who are the victorious Law and Justice party and what do they want?
Law and Justice don’t fit into the UK’s political vocabulary. Some UKIP and Tories here, dabs of New and Old Labour there. They were set up by the identical Kaczynski twins, Lech and Jarosław, who found fame in communist Poland as angelic boy film-stars but went on to achieve prominence in the Solidarity movement against communism. Lech Kaczynski was elected Polish president in the 2005 elections, but died with dozens of other top Poles in the 2010 Smolensk air disaster. His brother Jarosław has stayed active as the driving-force behind Law and Justice but has encouraged younger modernising loyalists, most notably Poland’s new President Andrzej Duda, to come to the fore.
Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda Photo: AP
Law and Justice are usually denounced as nutty Catholic reactionary right-wingers by the chattering classes within Poland and around Europe. In fact they are a sui generis movement of truculent, carefully Eurosceptic étatist-patriots. They urge a “strong Poland”, by which they mainly mean robust and sternly honest state institutions, and a square deal for state employees and pensioners.
Latterly Law and Justice have made a successful effort to broaden their appeal towards small businesses and younger voters. But they are instinctively suspicious of big business and banks, and loath to do anything radical to reform state processes or advance privatisation/deregulation. They are comfortable playing to conservative Catholic instincts of older Polish voters, but they see the Catholic Church as a patriotic force: they are not religious zealots.
In foreign policy terms Law and Justice will be to the fore in pressing that Europe and the West stand firm against Russian neo-imperialism in Ukraine and Syria (more NATO, please), while cautious in what that means in practice. Do not expect Poland to rush to embrace Muslim refuges and “migrants” from the Middle East: as far as Warsaw is concerned, Poland, for grim historical reasons has to over-insure in maintaining its national identity, and in any case Poland has taken in plenty of Ukrainians and Chechens escaping the former Soviet space.
The big question for us: how will the new Polish government see the UK’s reelings and writhings over Britain’s EU membership?
Insofar as David Cameron tries to scale back free movement of people and jobs across EU borders for EU citizens, he’ll never get sympathy or support in Warsaw: memories of decades of Warsaw Pact communist imprisonment for the whole population run deep.
David Cameron’s attempt to scale back free movement of people across EU borders will have no support in Warsaw
However, Law and Justice won’t be unhappy if the UK’s “demands” and the EU’s wider crises cause radical rethinking and eventual treaty change away from “ever-closer integration” in favour of a plenty of powers returning to EU member states. While that’s rumbling on, they will steer well clear of Poland joining the Eurozone, and relish standing up in Brussels for coal mines and other unfashionable non-Green causes.
All in all, Poland’s winning Law and Justice party defy simple categorisations. They are quixotic, prickly and proud: not easy partners for any wider European political tendency, including the Cameron Conservatives.
But credit where it’s due: Jarosław Kaczynski has done a superb job in plunging his opponents into divided disarray. Charles de Gaulle famously said that he had “a certain idea of France”. Jarosław Kaczynski has a similarly subtle but powerful view of Poland.
Law and Justice can now position themselves as the natural party of Polish government and champions of Europe’s national patriotic traditions for a good time to come. Other European capitals need to get used to them fast.
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