UK Politics Thread X: Upcoming Local Elections in May

[Forsher]

From my perspective, the 2010 coalition arrangement killed the Liberal Democrats as a relevant entity. Reading Arch's post about the negotiations, I kind of get the impression that either this is not an unpopular opinion or, at least, Arch agrees with it. Assuming, therefore, that the premise is correct, is thirteen years to return to relevancy a long time in the cold or a quick recovery?

The justification for the arrest of the protestors offered (At least on the news earlier), that some had a history of throwing eggs at the monarchs and so there was a reasonable suspicion and it was precautionary, was indicative to me of how we don't really need this law. Surely if they have behaved that way in the past, a lifelong restraining order would be both proportional and prudent. Then you simply arrest them for breaking that, rather than protesting per se.

I feel like people are letting the shiny coronation regalia distract them. The problem with these stories isn't "you can't protest the King" the problem is "you can't protest".

Adding the republicanism that several people in this thread espouse is getting in the way of the bigger problem those same people are trying to talk about.

[Tinhampton]

The BBC slightly updated its pharmacist-prescribing article overnight and are now trying to emphasise that Therese Coffey is, in fact, going to go full Therese Coffey on us

[The Nihilistic view]

One assumes the bike still works without a lock no?

This may shock you but some of us prefer not to have to pay to keep replacing our bikes when they get stolen.

It's London.... Boris bikes!

[The Nihilistic view]

Come on people's, vote for UUP in the poll!

[-Astoria-]

Come on people's, vote for UUP in the poll!

why

[The Huskar Social Union]

Come on people's, vote for UUP in the poll!

Doug Beattie is that you

[Old Tyrannia]

Come on people's, vote for UUP in the poll!

why

They are the most reliable and sane option for unionists.

[The Huskar Social Union]

why

They are the most reliable and sane option for unionists.

Honestly not wrong (that is if you want to vote specifically on unionist lines and not cross community or for an "other" candidate etc), i would love it if the UUP took some councillors away from the DUP for instance. Id rather have more UUP politicians around than them.

[The Archregimancy]

From my perspective, the 2010 coalition arrangement killed the Liberal Democrats as a relevant entity.

It didn't kill the party, but it did do significant long-term damage.

I'll admit that in the darkest period from 2015-2017, I was seriously concerned about the party's long-term future, and whether it would go the way of the Australian Democrats. Even into 2019, the emergence of Change UK briefly seemed to present an existential threat to the LibDems. The loss of third place in Parliament - which brings with it certain speaking rights - to the SNP also undermined the party's profile. But paradoxically, the chaos of 2019 - notwithstanding the disappointing general election result - was likely the turning point. The party has rebuilt itself at the local council level again, so the underlying foundations are much stronger than they have been in years.

Boris Johnson and Liz Truss subsequently did wonders for the LibDems via their damage to the Conservative Party brand, and the embrace of a hard Brexit that may play well in the Red Wall, but is a more difficult sell in the Blue Wall; there's a reasonable constituency of disgruntled small-l liberal Tories who could never bring themselves to vote for Labour, but don't mind voting for the LibDems. I'm not sure how much faith I place in the recent Redfield & Winton post-local election poll showing the LibDems at 16%, but at the next general election I'd be happy with 12-14% of the vote, and overtaking the SNP as the third-largest party at Westminster.

Rebuilding after the car crash of 2015 was always going to take time; but we seem to be in a better place now than we have been for years.

[Tinhampton]

The Telegraph, such a Tory newspaper of record that it didn't even endorse Blair in 1997, is running a headline on its (paywalled) website reading "Poland will be wealthier than Britain by 2030 – it’s time we took notice". Isn't that a Keir Starmer/FT talking point?

[The Archregimancy]

The Telegraph, such a Tory newspaper of record that it didn't even endorse Blair in 1997, is running a headline on its (paywalled) website reading "Poland will be wealthier than Britain by 2030 – it’s time we took notice". Isn't that a Keir Starmer/FT talking point?

Have just spent the weekend in Poznan for an archaeology conference, and while I wouldn't want to judge the entirety of Poland on the basis of a long weekend in one city in what's traditionally the wealthiest and most liberal part of the country, certainly Poznan is doing very well.

[-Astoria-]

The Telegraph, such a Tory newspaper of record that it didn't even endorse Blair in 1997, is running a headline on its (paywalled) website reading "Poland will be wealthier than Britain by 2030 – it’s time we took notice". Isn't that a Keir Starmer/FT talking point?

Just say the word, and — poof!

Poland will be wealthier than Britain by 2030 – it’s time we took notice
Country has shaken off Communism’s shackles to stand up to Putin as Germany and France dither
By Daniel Johnson | 7 May 2023 • 6:00am

On a visit to Wrocław a fortnight ago, the zloty dropped: Poland is rapidly becoming the new central European superpower.

When I visited Poland as the Telegraph’s Eastern Europe correspondent in 1989, its cities were drab, decayed and ringed by hideous communist-era buildings. Shops were barren, expectations were low and life was hard.

Yet nowhere else in the Soviet empire did people's power prevail so triumphantly as in Poland. The land of lost causes became the vanguard of liberty — and prosperity.

On its current path, Poland is on track to become wealthier than Britain by 2030 thanks to a post-communist economic miracle. The country has become a hotbed for future-facing industries such as battery manufacturing and tech.

Warsaw is using this economic strength to transform the country into a formidable fighting force to guard against the Russian wolf at the door. Its willingness to stand against Moscow has also won it allies among many neighbouring countries.

As Germany and France tie themselves in knots over their response to the Ukraine war, Poland's star is on the rise.

Warsaw’s growing war chest
The country's increasing importance is obvious when looking at its military.

Warsaw's plan is to double the size of the army to 300,000 soldiers, equipped with the latest Western kit.

Poland is spending some $10bn (£7.9bn) on the US-made Himars artillery systems that have proved so effective on the Ukrainian battlefield, just one example of its significant investment plans.

Similarly, Poland is buying a fleet of F-35 Lightning II aircraft and 116 Abrams tanks, replacing the Soviet-era MiG fighters and T-72 tanks that are being given to Ukraine.

All this military hardware comes at a high price. Poland has raised its defence spending to 4pc of GDP this year, from 2.5pc last year. This makes Warsaw’s war chest relatively one of the largest in Nato, with plans to sustain or even increase these levels for the foreseeable future.

Polish defence spending will thus be more than twice that of other major Continental Nato members France, Germany, Italy and Spain, and significantly higher than that of the UK, which only plans to reach 2.5pc by 2030.

What this means is that Poland may well soon possess the largest and best land fighting capabilities of all the European members of Nato. Even France, with only some 200,000 front-line troops, may soon find itself outnumbered by Poland.

The Polish build-up is not only intended to deter Russia, whose Kaliningrad exclave shares a land border with Poland, but also puts pressure on Germany to pull its weight in the alliance.

Despite Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s promise of a geopolitical Zeitenwende (“turning point”) that would see Berlin ramp up defence spending, Germany has admitted that it will in fact only rise by 0.1pc of GDP to 1.6pc this year, far below the Nato minimum of 2pc.

The Poles can be forgiven for feeling exposed and driven to go it alone when it comes to military might.

It is true that the Bundeswehr is now (controversially) stationing Patriot anti-missile batteries in eastern Poland – the first time the Germans have had a significant military presence there since 1945. But this gesture by Berlin is simply a fig leaf to disguise the failure to give Ukraine the arms and ammunition it needs to defeat Putin.

German reluctance to stand up to Russian aggression was exemplified by the row over Leopard 2 tanks. Berlin only agreed to supply these modern battle tanks to Ukraine last January after intense pressure from Nato allies – including a spat with the Poles, who threatened to give their own Leopards to Kyiv without German approval.

In the end, Berlin gave permission and Warsaw delivered the tanks in February. The Germans themselves only sent tanks a month later.

From a Polish perspective, German military weakness and complacency on Ukraine are infuriating but hardly surprising, given the scandalously close relations of German political and business leaders with Vladimir Putin’s regime.

Berlin’s ruling Left-wing coalition, led by Scholz, includes his own Social Democratic Party (SPD), which has a long history of appeasing Russia, beginning with Gerhard Schröder’s role in the Nord Stream project.

The Nord Stream I and II gas pipelines were obviously counter to Polish and Ukrainian security interests, but for two decades under Angela Merkel and Scholz, the Germans insisted that these strategic networks were purely commercial matters.

Any hint of Russo-German collaboration against Poland plays into deep-seated historical fears, most obviously the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which led directly to invasion and genocide by both Nazis and Soviet occupiers.

Russia’s heavily armed and fortified Kaliningrad exclave, sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania, is a reminder of how that grisly tale ended. This Russified sliver of pre-war East Prussia, which was recently reinforced with nuclear weapons by the Kremlin, is home to the Russian fleet in winter and exists to stand guard on the Baltic – primarily over Poland.

It is therefore understandable that when Berlin makes overtures to Moscow, in Warsaw they start playing Chopin’s Funeral March.

Yet it is not just Warsaw that has reason to despair at Berlin’s approach. Other central and eastern European countries are equally nervous.
France, too, is not inspiring confidence among this bloc, with Emmanuel Macron seemingly bowled over by an increasingly bellicose Xi Jinping.

Macron seems happy to nod along with Beijing’s talking points even as its outriders are claiming former Soviet Union nations do not have sovereignty.

A lack of leadership from Berlin and Paris has created a gap, and Warsaw has been only too happy to fill it.

Polish President Andrzej Duda earlier this month launched what he dubbed a “diplomatic offensive”, visiting Western leaders to “raise awareness in various corners of the world about what's happening here, in our region, about the nature of the Russian barbaric aggression”.

Post-communist economic miracle
Diplomatic and military leadership is only possible with a strong economy.

Looking down from the dizzying heights of Wrocław Cathedral’s twin towers on a recent visit, the view was breathtaking.

Beyond Wrocław’s magnificently restored heart, with its Gothic cathedral island, Renaissance Old Town Square and Baroque university quarter, a modern metropolis of almost 700,000 people stretches out as far as the eye can see.

The view is a microcosm of Poland’s traumatic history, but also of its post-Communist economic miracle.

Now the third largest and second wealthiest Polish city, Wrocław is visibly booming. As the capital of Lower Silesia, its proximity to the German, Czech and other lucrative markets has helped to make it one of Europe’s leading high-tech hubs.

Today, Wrocław has even surpassed the pre-war prosperity of Breslau, the German name for what was then the largest German city east of Berlin.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Poles were the first former Soviet country to restore democracy, free markets and the rule of law. Yet they still had a mountain to climb. In 1989, Polish workers had a GDP per capita that was just a tenth of their German counterparts.

Three decades of steady growth has wrought a miracle. The economic disparities have narrowed dramatically. Adjusted for purchasing parity, GDP per head in Poland is now £28,200 compared with £35,000 in the UK, £34,200 in France and £39,800 in Germany. At its current trajectory rate, Poland will overtake the UK by 2030.

Since the millennium, Poland’s real GDP per capita has more than doubled; by contrast, GDP per capita in Britain, France and Germany grew between 15pc and 24pc over the same period.

The truth is that living standards in places like Warsaw or Wrocław are already comparable to those in Berlin, Paris and London.

Indeed, the quality of life for young families is undoubtedly higher. My son and his Polish wife emigrated to her native Wrocław with their two small children a year ago.

They have no regrets. The tax and benefit system supports families, with a 500 zloty (£100) monthly payment for each child. My three-year-old grandson attends an excellent public przedszkole (preschool or kindergarten) for about £50 a month.

One reason for the Anglo-Polish exodus to the homeland is that Poland is still a cheap place to live. Even though inflation there, at around 15pc, is nearly twice the EU average, most retail prices in Wrocław are still a fraction of those in London.

In general, living costs are much lower in Poland than in Western Europe. Rents in Wrocław are approximately one fifth of those in London, for example, while a pint of beer in a bar won’t cost you much more than £1.

It is no wonder that many Poles who moved to Britain or Germany to work after Poland joined the EU in 2004 have now returned.

The gap in wages, though still significant, has narrowed and the Polish economy now offers opportunities that simply didn’t exist 20 years ago. Inward investment, the OECD shows, has been plentiful and the economy has shifted towards higher value activities.

Wrocław, for example, is a major base for the South Korean electronics giant LG. Recently Poland overtook the US in producing the lithium batteries used by electric cars. Poland now even has a trade surplus with “exports world champion” Germany.

In education, Poland excels too. It consistently ranks among the top five or six in reading, maths and science out of 38 OECD countries — well above richer countries such as Britain, France or Germany. This lays the foundation for continued future strong economic growth.

Poles work hard, too: on average 1,830 hours a year, more than the notoriously hard-working Americans and well ahead of British, French or German counterparts.

All this may come as a surprise. Though Poland is still admired by the British, it is seen by many as a poor country that is to be pitied rather than envied.

One reason for this negative image is that some two million Poles emigrated after the country’s EU entry, with about half of them coming to the UK. Mass emigration was driven partly by unemployment at home, which remained stubbornly high for many years.

That impoverished image, though, is hopelessly out of date. After a period in the wilderness as the economy was retooled, Poland is now booming.

Today's success can largely be attributed to the free market reforms of the legendary post-Communist finance minister Leszek Balcerowicz during the immediate post-1989 period.

As Poland emerged blinking into the light after 40 years of Communism, Balcerowicz was the man with a plan – a new kind of plan – to abolish the planned economy.

The Balcerowicz Plan was a high-risk, accelerated Thatcherite shock to the system, but it worked. The big bang opened up Polish business to the global market and it has flourished. Until the pandemic struck, Poland had boasted the world’s longest period of uninterrupted growth: 28 years.

A sign of Polish resilience is that though the economy shrank by 2.4pc in the last three months of 2022, it still grew by 4.9pc overall last year.

History is never far below the surface in Polish politics.

The Germans murdered three million Polish Jews in the Holocaust; another three million ethnic Poles were also killed and much of the population was displaced during and after the Second World War. Memories of that nightmare have now returned with the Russian invasion of neighbouring Ukraine.

The war brought a huge influx of refugees. In one year 11.5 million Ukrainians crossed the border, of whom about 1.4 million remain in Poland.
To put it in context, Poland has absorbed nearly 10 times as many refugees as Britain. Yet there is an important difference to bear in mind.

Poland has one of the lowest birth rates and consequently fastest ageing populations in Europe. The country needs immigration, but has been reluctant to accept much ethnic or linguistic diversity.

Ukrainians blend into Polish society more easily and many have family members there. Even before the war, the Polish-Ukrainian border was one of the EU’s most porous frontiers.

There is, though, one crucial issue where Poland is resisting Ukrainian interests: grain.

There is fierce opposition to cheap Ukrainian imports. The resistance comes from farmers in Poland and four other EU member states: Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Bulgaria. All but the last share borders with Ukraine and all their governments back the farmers.

Protectionism is an article of faith for the populist governments that control this Polish-led bloc. In recent weeks, they have imposed unilateral bans on Ukrainian imports of wheat, maize, rapeseed and sunflower seeds.

Last Tuesday, Brussels caved in to their demands by legitimising these bans, at a cost of at least £160m to Ukraine according to Kyiv’s central bank.

Under the EU deal, Poles and their partners will allow shipments of Ukrainian grain over the border, but only to be re-exported to other countries. At a time of high inflation, Polish consumers would doubtless welcome cheaper bread, pasta and other products, but the agricultural lobby is highly influential.

Poland’s ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS), is relying heavily on rural voters in its bid to be re-elected for a third consecutive term this autumn.

Political paranoia
It is domestic politics that could prove the biggest stumbling block to Poland’s effort to become a superpower. Accusations of undermining the rule of law and suppression of public debate have been levelled at Law and Justice, while an air of paranoia has hung over the country's politics for a long time.

The Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, and President Duda both belong to Law and Justice. But Poland’s ultimate powerbroker is the party chairman and co-founder, Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

Now 73, Kaczynski prefers the role of eminence grise to holding high office, but his supporters refer to him as “Chief of State” – the title hitherto reserved for Marshal Pilsudski, Poland’s unofficial ruler in the 1920s.

Such echoes of a past military strongman naturally alarm the liberal opposition, led by Donald Tusk, the former European Council President.

Tusk and his Civic Platform party regard Law and Justice as merely Kaczynski’s reactionary Catholic cabal, hostile to the European Union and the institutions of Polish democracy, including the independent judiciary and free press.

For his part, Kaczynski sees Tusk and his party as the bankrupt heirs of the communist era. His ideology of nationalism, social conservatism, generous welfare and military strength has proved popular among poorer voters.

Ironically, both leaders are former members of the Solidarity movement. Kaczynski and his twin brother Lech once worked closely with Lech Wałesa, the former electrician who personified Solidarity, led the opposition to Communism and later became President.

Despite his fame abroad, persistent allegations of collaboration with the secret police have made Wałesa a divisive figure in Poland.

The Wałesa case exemplifies the toxic role of conspiracy theories in Polish politics. Perhaps the most explosive revolve around the death of the former President Lech Kaczynski in a 2010 plane crash near Smolensk, which also killed many other members of the Polish elite. As the surviving twin, Jaroslaw has consistently blamed the Russians for what he sees as the assassination of his brother.

It did not help that the Polish delegation was en route to a commemoration of the victims of the 1940 Katyn massacre – the most notorious of Soviet cover-ups – nor that the man in overall charge on the Russian side was none other than Vladimir Putin.

When Kaczynski returned to power in 2016, he ordered a new investigation, which revealed plenty of irregularities but no clear evidence that the crash had been sabotage rather than an accident.

The instrumentalisation of paranoia in Polish politics stems largely from the lack of a tradition of criticism. The main opposition television station, TVN, is ultimately owned by Warner Brothers. Yet in 2021, the Polish Sejm (parliament) tried to ban foreign ownership of the country's media.

The White House was ultimately forced to intervene to block a measure that would have deprived Poles of a popular alternative to state-controlled media.

History lessons
Perhaps the most serious accusation against the government is that it has not only appointed loyalists to be judges and prosecutors, but has in effect outlawed opposition lawyers. It is increasingly difficult to obtain a fair trial, or indeed any trial at all.

One prominent case in point is the distinguished Anglo-Polish historian Adam Zamoyski. He has had his passport confiscated and been under investigation for nearly 18 months, without any charges being brought against him. De facto, he has been deprived of his livelihood, but there is no habeas corpus and hence no right to have his day in court.

The irony that the rule of law is threatened under a party calling itself Law and Justice is not lost on many Polish citizens. Trust in government is at just 34.2pc, partly for this reason. The figure is much lower in Poland than in the UK, France or Germany.

Once again, history is a useful guide to present day Polish politics. In his book, Warsaw 1920, Zamoyski shows how Marshal Pilsudski and his Polish Legion saved Europe from Lenin’s horde of five million men. Their victory became known as “the miracle on the Vistula”.

There was, however, a less auspicious aftermath. Zamoyski explains that after the war Pilsudski and his veterans tried to exclude pluralism from Polish public life: “As they increasingly invoked national solidarity to deal with every problem, be it economic or political, they fostered ill-feeling between the ethnic Poles and the various minorities, such as the Germans, the Ukrainians and particularly the Jews.”

This description of the prewar Second Polish Republic sounds uncomfortably familiar to many of those living in the present Third Republic. While Kaczynski, Duda and Morawiecki are by no means anti-Semitic, they are hypersensitive to what they see as attempts by historians to tarnish Poland’s reputation. Others regard it as normal scholarly research.

Stories in the American, British or Israeli media that question Poland’s treatment of its Jewish minority, past or present, are wrongly assumed to have ulterior, anti-Polish motives.

Warts and all, Poland today is still a vigorous democracy. Poles are right to take pride in their republic and its armed forces. But there should be no place for paranoia. They do not need to see Poland as a victim or a martyr.

Whatever the path of Polish politics from here, it is hard to ignore the fact that Warsaw is the coming force.

Like the miracle on the Vistula a century ago, the Polish economic miracle is an extraordinary achievement. It is time that Europe sat up and took notice.

[Celritannia]

Come on people's, vote for UUP in the poll!

I much prefer Alliance.

[The Archregimancy]

Take the source with as many pinches as salt as you deem necessary, but it looks like Laurence Fox's Reclaim Party is about to get its first MP.

Most political parties, mind, wouldn't take the imminent arrival of Andrew Bridgen as their first MP as something to celebrate.

[Bienenhalde]

Come on people's, vote for UUP in the poll!

Well, as a fellow UUP sympathizer, I did my part.

[The Huskar Social Union]

Look at all these UUP boys in the chat

[The Huskar Social Union]

Take the source with as many pinches as salt as you deem necessary, but it looks like Laurence Fox's Reclaim Party is about to get its first MP.

Most political parties, mind, wouldn't take the imminent arrival of Andrew Bridgen as their first MP as something to celebrate.

Given how much of a whiny conspiracy driven twat Fox is it makes perfect sense he would welcome Bridgen.

[San Lumen]

From my perspective, the 2010 coalition arrangement killed the Liberal Democrats as a relevant entity.

It didn't kill the party, but it did do significant long-term damage.

I'll admit that in the darkest period from 2015-2017, I was seriously concerned about the party's long-term future, and whether it would go the way of the Australian Democrats. Even into 2019, the emergence of Change UK briefly seemed to present an existential threat to the LibDems. The loss of third place in Parliament - which brings with it certain speaking rights - to the SNP also undermined the party's profile. But paradoxically, the chaos of 2019 - notwithstanding the disappointing general election result - was likely the turning point. The party has rebuilt itself at the local council level again, so the underlying foundations are much stronger than they have been in years.

Boris Johnson and Liz Truss subsequently did wonders for the LibDems via their damage to the Conservative Party brand, and the embrace of a hard Brexit that may play well in the Red Wall, but is a more difficult sell in the Blue Wall; there's a reasonable constituency of disgruntled small-l liberal Tories who could never bring themselves to vote for Labour, but don't mind voting for the LibDems. I'm not sure how much faith I place in the recent Redfield & Winton post-local election poll showing the LibDems at 16%, but at the next general election I'd be happy with 12-14% of the vote, and overtaking the SNP as the third-largest party at Westminster.

Rebuilding after the car crash of 2015 was always going to take time; but we seem to be in a better place now than we have been for years.

They did amazing in the local elections winning in places no one expected like Windsor and Maidenhead.

[The Huskar Social Union]

Got sent this: What is proof reading?

"I joined thediamond, Carryduff Park playground and outside gym army at 16 and served in the forces for 22 years"

[Ifreann]

Got sent this: What is proof reading?

"I joined thediamond, Carryduff Park playground and outside gym army at 16 and served in the forces for 22 years"

Big Hendo might need some help with IT.

[The Huskar Social Union]

Got sent this: What is proof reading?

"I joined thediamond, Carryduff Park playground and outside gym army at 16 and served in the forces for 22 years"

Big Hendo might need some help with IT.

Who needs IT when you have the honour of being AREA though?

[The Archregimancy]

Got sent this: What is proof reading?

"I joined thediamond, Carryduff Park playground and outside gym army at 16 and served in the forces for 22 years"

Bytendering: embracing queerness in Northern Ireland's planning process.

[The Huskar Social Union]

Labour lead is nineteen points in latest results from Deltapoll.

LAB: 47% (+3)
CON: 28% (-1)
LDEM: 9% (-2)
OTH:16% (-)

Fieldwork: 5th - 9th May 2023. Sample: 1,550 GB adults (Changes from 28th April - 2nd May 2023)

Leader of the Opposition @Keir_Starmer's net approval had increased by 12 points this week.

@RishiSunak's has decreased by four.

Keir Starmers net approval is at +11, Sunaks is -10

[Tinhampton]

In March, the senior coroner from Somerset ordered the Ministry of Defence to review the appropriateness of giving every retiring member of the Armed Forces a ceremonial dagger after a retired Royal Engineer used his to kill a husband and wife in 2021, and to submit to her their findings by April 25th this year. Did the MoD decide to cease this practice in light of the coroner's request? Given that the latter date has passed, I would expect a decision to have been made on the issue.

[Fartsniffage]

The Telegraph, such a Tory newspaper of record that it didn't even endorse Blair in 1997, is running a headline on its (paywalled) website reading "Poland will be wealthier than Britain by 2030 – it’s time we took notice". Isn't that a Keir Starmer/FT talking point?

Have just spent the weekend in Poznan for an archaeology conference, and while I wouldn't want to judge the entirety of Poland on the basis of a long weekend in one city in what's traditionally the wealthiest and most liberal part of the country, certainly Poznan is doing very well.

Did you stand up, turn your back on the speaker, and then jump up and down for a bit?