Blogoir

My piece about the latest Summit over at Daily Telegraph blogs is up, prompting the usual vivid comments from Daily Telegraph readers:

This piece by Crawford simply comes across as Civil Service gobbeldy-gook and demonstrates that he's no understanding of any of this. Is that why the Civil Service seem to be so utterly useless when negotiating with their counterparts in other EU countries ?

After all these years, after all these betrayals, after all the secret signings of treaties in darkened closets, after all the lies, the deceit, the obsequious kow towing and u-turns you and others STILL think it's down to ignorance, incompetence and cock up theory?

We often wonder why countries wish to join the Euro (beyond Dan Hannan’s point that the “club” is highly attractive to any country’s senior politicians). However, why are existing EZ countries so keen that other dissimilar and unconverged economies must share their currency. It’s like the Augean stable cleaner, up to his knees in the smelly stuff, inviting a fresh herd of elephant into a couple of vacant stalls.

Here's me:

The basic problem for the UK is that the tortuous manoeuvres required to keep the eurozone afloat can impact on us in different ways. In general it suits us if most of the rest of the European Union countries share a viable single currency. Plus if it crashed we would export less to the rest of Europe and end up worse off.

However, the point of the Prime Minister’s insistence (the "veto") that the rescue arrangements take place outside the existing EU Treaty structure was not about that. He wanted to try to establish some sort of legal firebreak, so that measures and norms aimed at propping up the eurozone could not automatically be applied to us if the Commission and/or European Parliament and/or European Court of Justice so decided.

Where are we now after the attempt by EU leaders to calm things down? In a murky but more or less tolerable position. The eurozoners must try to sort out their business via a new Treaty which is not part of the formal EU Treaty structure, albeit an expression of the "enhanced cooperation" provisions which those Treaties allow.

David Cameron has agreed to allow the European Court of Justice to support enforcement of the new Treaty’s rules (no doubt because he wants to help the eurozone reform itself, and any weak discipline is better than none). But quite how far – if at all – any ECJ decisions under that arrangement might (a) read across directly to EU Treaty interpretations, (b) to the UK’s disadvantage remains to be seen...

Plus I added a bit on Poland:

We peer at such EU Summits from our foggy offshore position. But spare a thought for the Poles, whose Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski delivered the mother of all pro-EU federalism speeches in Berlin back in November. The Poles are not yet in the eurozone but (under current management) insist they want to join it. Hence, question: how far should countries not yet in the eurozone but in the queue to join it have a say in eurozone reforms which will impact on them?

The problem here is that the more countries have such a say, the harder it becomes to get things agreed and implemented. Poland has the fastest growing EU economy but its total GDP represents only some 5% of the combined GDPs of the five largest eurozone members. So while the Germans and French will have welcomed the pro-EU noises coming from Warsaw, what they really need is Poland to be "realistic" about its weight in the greater scheme of tough decisions needed.

This explains why time-wasting new configurations for eurozone meetings have had to be agreed, to allow the 17 current eurozone countries to get on with it while trying to allow eurozone wannabes (led by Poland) some sort of input now and again. The Poles gloomily must accept that the key issues will be decided at 17, ie when they’re not there.

Conclusion?

The current core EU leaders are like those BUgs Bunny cartoon characters who reach the edge of the cliffs and keep striding determinedly out into thin air, only to realise in total panic that not much is supporting them. Their current efforts to flail their way back to solid ground are certainly impressive. But will they succeed?

My piece about the latest Summit over at Daily Telegraph blogs is up, prompting the usual vivid comments from Daily Telegraph readers:

This piece by Crawford simply comes across as Civil Service gobbeldy-gook and demonstrates that he's no understanding of any of this. Is that why the Civil Service seem to be so utterly useless when negotiating with their counterparts in other EU countries ?

After all these years, after all these betrayals, after all the secret signings of treaties in darkened closets, after all the lies, the deceit, the obsequious kow towing and u-turns you and others STILL think it's down to ignorance, incompetence and cock up theory?

We often wonder why countries wish to join the Euro (beyond Dan Hannan’s point that the “club” is highly attractive to any country’s senior politicians). However, why are existing EZ countries so keen that other dissimilar and unconverged economies must share their currency. It’s like the Augean stable cleaner, up to his knees in the smelly stuff, inviting a fresh herd of elephant into a couple of vacant stalls.

Here's me:

The basic problem for the UK is that the tortuous manoeuvres required to keep the eurozone afloat can impact on us in different ways. In general it suits us if most of the rest of the European Union countries share a viable single currency. Plus if it crashed we would export less to the rest of Europe and end up worse off.

However, the point of the Prime Minister’s insistence (the "veto") that the rescue arrangements take place outside the existing EU Treaty structure was not about that. He wanted to try to establish some sort of legal firebreak, so that measures and norms aimed at propping up the eurozone could not automatically be applied to us if the Commission and/or European Parliament and/or European Court of Justice so decided.

Where are we now after the attempt by EU leaders to calm things down? In a murky but more or less tolerable position. The eurozoners must try to sort out their business via a new Treaty which is not part of the formal EU Treaty structure, albeit an expression of the "enhanced cooperation" provisions which those Treaties allow.

David Cameron has agreed to allow the European Court of Justice to support enforcement of the new Treaty’s rules (no doubt because he wants to help the eurozone reform itself, and any weak discipline is better than none). But quite how far – if at all – any ECJ decisions under that arrangement might (a) read across directly to EU Treaty interpretations, (b) to the UK’s disadvantage remains to be seen...

Plus I added a bit on Poland:

We peer at such EU Summits from our foggy offshore position. But spare a thought for the Poles, whose Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski delivered the mother of all pro-EU federalism speeches in Berlin back in November. The Poles are not yet in the eurozone but (under current management) insist they want to join it. Hence, question: how far should countries not yet in the eurozone but in the queue to join it have a say in eurozone reforms which will impact on them?

The problem here is that the more countries have such a say, the harder it becomes to get things agreed and implemented. Poland has the fastest growing EU economy but its total GDP represents only some 5% of the combined GDPs of the five largest eurozone members. So while the Germans and French will have welcomed the pro-EU noises coming from Warsaw, what they really need is Poland to be "realistic" about its weight in the greater scheme of tough decisions needed.

This explains why time-wasting new configurations for eurozone meetings have had to be agreed, to allow the 17 current eurozone countries to get on with it while trying to allow eurozone wannabes (led by Poland) some sort of input now and again. The Poles gloomily must accept that the key issues will be decided at 17, ie when they’re not there.

Conclusion?

The current core EU leaders are like those BUgs Bunny cartoon characters who reach the edge of the cliffs and keep striding determinedly out into thin air, only to realise in total panic that not much is supporting them. Their current efforts to flail their way back to solid ground are certainly impressive. But will they succeed?

That story about my having contributed to the energetic Berlin Speech by Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski has reappeared, this time in a piece by Krzysztof Szczerski MP, a member of the Polish opposition.

It's in Polish. But the opening passage caught my beady eye.

In it Mr Szczerski notes the sharp tone of criticism directed in that speech towards the UK and claims that Mr Sikorski has confirmed that I "as a private Labour Party supporter" had been a collaborator on the speech.

Ha ha.

Here is a nicely turned interview with Polish writer Andrzej (Andrew) Stasiuk where he gives us some deliciously naughty thoughts about European nationalism and German hegemony:

Before Europe existed because it knew how to take risks, it went to sea to seek a fortune. Today it just accumulates and fears losses. I know nothing of nation states. I know nothing of states at all. For me language is of course primary. Poland survived partitions, occupations thanks to its language, thanks to the culture. Religion also played an important role in affirming the national consciousness. The Catholic Church replaced the budget, the army and taxes. Today, it is somewhat trying to do the same.

But what seems the most essential, is the feeling of uniqueness, of unity, which is worth sacrificing for. Otherwise, why not become German for convenience sake, Russian on a whim or Jewish to upset everybody? This 'Polishness' must also certainly be a sort of feeling of superiority. Don't you think so? Yes, a feeling of superiority. Unjustified, of course. But still.

Are you afraid that Germany will become a dangerous nation?

Yes, and that is very good because my country exists more when it is threatened. Without danger, without troubles, Poland is less alive and a little more inexistent. However, whenever nationalism comes knocking on the door, it feels better right away, it perks up and gets its strength back. So long live German nationalism. Which doesn't mean, does it, that we must not remain vigilant.

Mr Stasiuk farms llamas. As well he might.

One of the things I do on training courses aimed at telling people how to Write with Impact is to cite Shrek. Issues and Shrek are like onions. They have layers.

No piece of writing can address all the layers of any problem. The trick is to show awareness of other layers but focus on one or two of them to help the reader make sense of it all.

Likewise it is a good idea to take a single issue and use it to illustrate a wider point. Or to take a seemingly obscure but nonetheless interesting question and force it to the top of people's attention.

All these devices help achieve the basic rule of good (and therefore impactful) writing: if you want it to be read, make it readable.

One of the best examples from my own career came in early 2004, not long after I arrived in Warsaw from Belgrade. Poland was set to join the European Union. Colossal numbers of Poles were likely to start moving to and fro between Poland and the UK - we had decided to open our Labour market unconditionally, much to the utter disbelief of the Polish leadership.

Once those Poles started moving with the aim of getting richer faster, what would they get up to? I thought it worth analysing one possible source of income - illicit cigarettes.

Hence a telegram I sent to London warning them in very simple language that the UK's multi-billion pound problems with the informal cigarette market was about to get a whole lot worse overnight.

I did this by spelling out in the simplest possible terms the economics for the average Pole of informal cigarette-selling, even within legal limits.

This telegram wittily called Smoking Ants - Coming Our Way? caused a minor sensation in the Cabinet Office. Officials scrambled round to change the rules to limit the numbers of cigarettes which people from the new EU member states could bring into the UK duty-free.

And, thanks to the miracles of Freedom of Information, I am pleased to share this telegram with you today. The FCO cheekily cut out a line or two on the grounds that UK relations with Poland might be adversely affected(!). But otherwise it's just as I drafted it. A nice example (if I say so myself) of drawing senior attention to an unexpected new problem by delivering work written in a bold way which no-one can avoid reading.

Diplomatic Folly Note: look out for the amusing reference to 'Trilateral' at the end. That was a footling attempt by Tony Blair to set up an inner UK/France/Germany driving force within the EU, which collapsed in no time at all in the face of the obvious objections (not least those emanating from one S Berlusconi).

Thus:

SUBJECT: EU ENLARGEMENT: SMOKING ANTS, COMING OUR WAY?

SUMMARY

1. Incentives for Poles to make a reasonable living in the UK's dodgy cigarette business. Policy contradictions.

DETAIL

2. As a non-smoking connoisseur of Balkan tobacco activities I recently met the local BAT team to talk about regional cigarette smuggling. Some striking conclusions.

The Big Picture

3. BAT have studied tens of thousands of discarded cigarette packets. They conclude that some 70 billion cigarettes are sold legally in Poland every year, with a further 20 billion smoked "illegally" (ie sold outside the official excise structure and smuggled into Poland).

4. A good proportion of this illegal trade is conducted by an army of "ants", individuals who carry small quantities of cigarettes into Poland from points East. But up to 50% of the illegal cigarette business is well organised, involving hundreds of truckloads of cigarettes each containing up to 10 million "sticks". [redacted]

5. The emergence of this lucrative illegal trade can be traced readily back to 2000, when Poland pushed up excise duties. Until then almost all the 90 billion cigarettes smoked in Poland each

year were passing through normal procedures. Smuggling soared with these new higher duties.

6. Sharp price/tax/excise differentials as between Russia, Poland and Western Europe are set to continue. Currently a pack of cigarettes which costs 50 cents in Russia sells for 1.30 dollars in Poland and up to 8 dollars in the UK. These ratios will change somewhat in the coming years as Poland raises the effective price of a pack towards EU levels, thereby giving serious new local incentives to regional smugglers (one good truckload can generate a profit of 1.5 million dollars). BAT expect some 50 billion cigarettes per year to be smuggled from Russia to Western Europe; this generates a 5 billion dollar profit - more than double BAT's own global annual pre-tax profit. Implications for UK of EU Accession

7. BAT point out that as things stand every Polish citizen is allowed to bring legally into the UK 200 cigarettes a trip. But after accession this figure jumps to 3200 cigarettes per trip. A pack of Dunhill can be bought in Poland for about £1 and be sold in a UK pub for up to £3.00. Each Pole entering the UK can hope to make a quick profit on the cigarettes of £250 per trip, not to mention extra money by importing a few bottles of cheap vodka. With a return coach fare of £50 and monthly unemployment benefit here of about £80, it is not difficult for a poor Pole to work out what to do. Better to get involved with UK officialdom by filling in UK benefit forms, or make easy money sitting on a bus?

COMMENT

8. The scale of the illicit cigarette business caused by price/tax differentials as between the UK and continental Europe is obvious and well known. It is part of a global compound interest drama: as rich countries get richer, the absolute wealth we generate gives ever-growing and vast incentives for honest people and gangsters alike to "play the margins". The cigarette price effects of EU enlargement is more of the same, albeit a great deal more of the same. But the upstream consequences of this illegality for the region are considerable.

9. Our Policy contains Contradictions. HMCE/HMT are looking at reducing the amounts of cigarettes which accession nationals can bring into the UK. Meanwhile we and our EU partners laboriously try to "train border guards and customs officials" on the EU's Eastern Borders. But only a couple of truckloads of cigarettes inject more resources into corrupting these official structures than we are injecting into reforming them. The corrupted structures then can be exploited not only by cigarette smugglers but also by human traffickers, global drug dealers and even terrorists - serious security questions here.

10. The cost of all this is not on a scale to destabilise the whole of Polish society as has happened in Serbia, to the point of the assassination of the Prime Minister. But it is a serious and systemic obstacle to reform. Scope for a new, hard look (Trilateral or in another smaller group first?) at what else might be done on the strategic level?

A lively day.

First, I spent the night in a wonky hotel in downtown Lewes. The room sloped alarmingly in two directions, to the point where anything smooth risked sliding off the table. The sign in the bathroom read thusly: "Shower Mat Ensure the suckers are in contact with the bath fully pressed down" A wearying period of pushing the bath in a downwards direction ensued.

Then I went to the University of Sussex, waving cheerily to a pair of woman strikers at the entrance as I whizzed past their absurd attempts to persuade me to show 'solidarity' with their 'demands'. My visit there was to give a presentation on European Conservatism to a genial seminar of political science students. Not a Chinese/Asian student in sight - they're all doing sciences, not mulling over political theory. Wait! Maybe science IS political theory.

While all this was going on, a strange story broke in Poland.

Some clever-clogs had run a Properties check on the Foreign Ministry's website version of the superb speech by Radek Sikorski in Berlin on Monday. And found that the original version of the document was called 'More Europe' - created by Charles Crawford.

Eeek.

Anyway, the Polish Foreign Ministry has put out a statement to the effect that for substantive and linguistic purposes the Minister had consulted all sorts of people including myself on the speech, and then written it himself , making changes even on the plane to Berlin.

The Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza carries the story and statement if anyone is interested.

So that's that. Anyone who knows Radek Sikorski will recognise his own inimitable style throughout the text.

Meanwhile I have wended my way to Heathrow where I am taking a plane in the morning to Moscow, to spend a jolly weekend as an elections observer for the Duma (parliament) elections on Sunday. My first time back in Russia for years. As Lenin or someone similarly cynical said, "It's not voting. It's counting".

Here in powerful fluent form is Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, speaking today in Berlin about Europe and the Eurozone.

If anyone can find a better peacetime speech by any Polish Foreign Minister or any Polish politician ever, let it be produced!

Not that it is perfect. Too many rather impenetrable statistics at various point. Some sentences are too long or involved.

He even - horror - takes a populist swipe at the UK (bear in mind the German audience and his own credentials as an Oxford graduate), after saying something important about 'subsidiarity'. Note how he abruptly switches to talking to the UK in the second person, as if we were in the room. Fine technique:

The more power and legitimacy we give to federal institutions, the more secure

member states should feel that certain prerogatives, everything to do with national

identity, culture, religion, lifestyle, public morals, and rates of income, corporate and

VAT taxes, should forever remain in the purview of states. Our unity can survive

different working hours or different family law in different countries.

Which brings me to the issue of whether an important member, Britain, can support reform. You have given the Union its common language. The Single Market was largely your brilliant idea. A British commissioner runs our diplomacy. You could lead Europe on defence. You are an indispensable link across the Atlantic.

On the other hand, Eurozone’s collapse would hugely harm your economy. Also, your total sovereign, corporate and household debt exceeds 400% of GDP. Are you sure markets will always favour you? We would prefer you in, but if you can’t join, please allow us to forge ahead. And please start explaining to your people that European decisions are not Brussels’ diktats but results of agreements in which you freely participate.

Fine, forge 'ahead' as you see fit. But pay for it yourselves. Don't expect too much British money if you overdo it. And don't try taxing us by the back door.

Nor is it easy to see from an admittedly befogged UK point of view how giving a turbo-boost to more powers at the European level as Sikorski suggests is in any meaningful way compatible with democracy as hitherto understood. More power to ... the European Parliament? No thanks. (Remember that one? Follow the link to see a German TV station doing a very early job to magnificent effect...)

Above all, isn't a wholesale reorganisation of  EU powers lunging in a Far More Europe way as Sikorski suggests completely unrealistic? How to negotiate a new treaty structure of such far-reaching new measures without the whole business getting bogged down in referenda and hopeless controversy? It's not by chance we have what we have. And German voters would have to be mad to allow other Europeans effectively to decide how much German money is transferred out of Germany for wider redistributive purposes.

Nonetheless, if you want to hear the message for More Europe delivered by a European foreign minister in a way calculated to impress an audience from another large member state, this is what it looks like.

This one passage - directed directly at Germany - is really good by any standard. Energetic and thoughtful, but also refeshingly blunt. An authentic contemporary rhetorical masterclass in delivering a tough message ("Listen, you helped get us all into this mess..!") to a foreign audience in their own country with style and grace.

Oh, but note too the hard-nosed Polish caveat tucked away at the end:

What does Poland ask of Germany?

We ask, first of all, that Germany admits that she is the biggest beneficiary of the current arrangements and therefore that she has the biggest obligation to make them sustainable.

Second, as you know best, you are not an innocent victim of others’ profligacy. You, who should have known better, have also broken the Growth and Stability Pact and your banks also recklessly bought risky bonds.

Third, because investors have been selling the bonds of exposed countries and flying to safety, your borrowing costs have been lower than they would have been in normal times.

Fourth, if your neighbours’ economies stall or implode, you greatly suffer, too.

Fifth, that despite your understandable aversion to inflation, you appreciate that the danger of collapse is now a much bigger threat.

Sixth, that because of your size and your history you have a special responsibility to preserve peace and democracy on the continent. Jurgen Habermas has wisely said that "If the European project fails, then there is the question of how long it will take to reach the status quo again. Remember the German Revolution of 1848: When it failed, it took us 100 years to regain the same level of democracy as before."

What, as Poland’s foreign minister, do I regard as the biggest threat to the security and prosperity of Poland today, on 28th November 2011? It’s not terrorism, it’s not the Taliban, and it’s certainly not German tanks. It’s not even Russian missiles which President Medvedev has just threatened to deploy on the EU’s border.

The biggest threat to the security and prosperity of Poland would be the collapse of the Euro zone. And I demand of Germany that, for your own sake and for ours, you help it survive and prosper. You know full well that nobody else can do it.

I will probably be first Polish foreign minister in history to say so, but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German inactivity.

You have become Europe’s indispensable nation. You may not fail to lead. Not dominate, but to lead in reform. Provided you include us in decision-making, Poland will support you.

I like various Sikorskiesque personal style-touches, such as this feline one:

As readers here know, the Spiegel Online site is a fine way to find thoughtful pieces on the goings-on in Europe from a German perspective.

Try these two for size.

The first is an interview with Polish Central Bank Governor Marek Belka (who served for a while as a technocrat Prime Minister while I was in Warsaw). Belka is a smart, steady operator who chooses his words well. Here he tries to present a cautious but optimistic picture of Poland's prospects for joining a reformed and disciplined Eurozone:

SPIEGEL: The phrase "Polish economy" once stood for inefficiency. How did Poland manage to be the only EU country to keep on growing its economy during the financial crisis?

Belka: We did a few things right. Our economic policy was cautious. We took integration into the EU very seriously. Many of our rules are more modern than the rules in Germany or France. We have had a debt limit enshrined in our constitution since 1997. We have low taxes and competitive labor costs. The Poles complain a lot, but we are basically optimists. Optimists spend money, while pessimists do not. The Germans believe that after the Hartz (welfare) reforms, they now have a flexible labor market. But ours is even more liberal. We have avoided financial turbulence. And there was no credit bubble.

...  The euro zone is heading for an increasingly closer political union, without which the euro can't be saved. One day Poland will join a new and different euro zone, which will have more of the characteristics of a federation than it does today. We have to be strong and healthy to avoid losing our economic sovereignty, which is now happening to a few countries that have problems.

And this is an important corrective to those of us in the richer parts of Europe squealing about 'austerity':

SPIEGEL: ... Why are the people in Eastern Europe so much more patient?

Belka: Because the people here still aren't used to prosperity. Let me give you an example from my days at the International Monetary Fund. It was at a time when the Latvians had to implement a drastic austerity program, which caused consumer spending to drop by 25 percent in a year.

I asked a Latvia negotiator how his country expected to survive this dramatic crisis. He said: What crisis? We had a crisis when the Soviets were sending us to Siberia. Here in Eastern Europe, many still remember why they were once poor, and they're not afraid of reasonable reforms that are painful in the short term.

But see also this tricky argument that failure to give Poland lots of EU money in the next Budget spending round would be a Breach of Promise:

SPIEGEL: Is it conceivable that the EU will cut back on other spending in the future because of the unimaginably expensive bailout funds? Spending such as subsidies and structural assistance, which has also helped Poland in recent years?

Belka: We're worried about that, of course. It would be a violation of the accession agreements. The deal, at the time, was this: We adjust our markets, and you help us in the process. If this were no longer the case, it would be a breach of promise.

Nice try. But no.

Then read this piece vividly describing how Germany's insistence that all countries make a 'real effort' is now creating a divided Europe:

... the price of her success in Brussels is the division of Europe. Those countries that are not part of the euro zone are now no longer part of a core Europe, and are now being asked to leave the room when the truly important issues are being debated. While the 17 euro-zone members walk at the front of the pack, the 10 non-euro-members are forced to walk behind, like stragglers and second-tier nations.

And now they have it in writing. In the closing document of last week's summit, euro-zone member states grant themselves the right to work together more closely without having to wait for the non-euro countries. The EFSF also deepens the divide. It is a facility set up by the 17 countries in the monetary union for the 17 countries in the monetary union...

The 17 euro-zone leaders decided to make the bailout fund and its director, Klaus Regling, even more important in the future. Regling will receive more power and influence, as well as more money. He will become the nucleus of a new Europe driven by fiscal policy.

The EU summits last week saw difficult exchanges between the UK and Eurozone countries about all this and a classic drafting fudge:

Most readers of this website are interested in one way or another in 'foreign affairs'.

As I have described on different occasions here, the heart of international diplomacy is the state. That idea in its modern form emerged from the Peace of Westphalia. Here are some passages from my 2009 DIPLOMAT article on this subject:

A vital date in the history of the modern world is 1648. That was when the Treaties of Osnabrück and Münster were signed. All readers of DIPLOMAT know these treaties off by heart. They together are more usually known as the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War within the Holy Roman Empire and the even more geriatric Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands.

The negotiation of those two treaties invented modern grand scale diplomatic junketing. Haggling meandered on for six years. Over 100 different delegations of states, ‘imperial states’ from the Holy Roman Empire and interest groups (today known as NGOs) jostled for good outcomes, all on generous expenses.

The Two Treaties were mainly about settling Europe’s violent religious differences. But in doing so they set up new principles of sovereignty, under which the rulers of ‘nation states’ agreed to manage their relationships in a peaceful or at least civilised way. As democracy slowly came to qualify the power of those rulers, such sovereignty was seen as lying not with the national leader but rather in the ‘nation’. Which opened the way for ‘nation states’ to emerge as independent actors on the international stage.

Hence two tricky questions, still alive and well today:

·         how does a defined territory join this grand process (ie what is a ‘state’)?

·         which people join this grand process (ie what is a ‘nation’?)?

... Meanwhile Yugoslavia too had broken up. That hard question at the heart of Westphalianism – nation or state? - posed itself in acute form

Should the rest of us recognise the former internal borders of the USSR and Yugoslavia as the borders of the new countries concerned? Or should we negotiate border changes in some cases, better to reflect the principle of self-determination? Who or what should be sovereign? 

... The West looked at Slovenia (predominantly Slovene-populated, borders mainly not contested) and decided to have its cake and eat it. Slovenia handily ticked both boxes: internal borders as new international borders, and self-determination.

Which was fine for Slovenia. But not for Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro or Serbia, the other five republics in communist Yugoslavia each with different ethnic/national identity tensions. Not to mention the sizeable category of ‘Yugoslavs’ – people not identifying themselves with one or other ethnic community...

You know the rest. Calamity. War. Refugee columns.  Ethnic cleansing. War crimes. ICTY. NATO bombing. In today’s Europe! Dayton. Rambouillet. More NATO bombing. Kosovo run by the UN. Milosevic sent to ICTY and dies in prison. Kosovo declares independence in 2008, but is still not recognised by the majority either of countries or of the world’s population.

... Diplomacy. Building on what exists (ie racial, ethnic, religious tensions going back centuries) and accept that Good Fences make Good Neighbours? As we (HMG/West) did in accepting the break-up of what remained of Yugoslavia into Serbia + Kosovo + Montenegro?

Or building towards what we insist has to exist, hoping to compel people to cooperate nicely within single state frameworks which they dislike and distrust, as we (HMG/West) have done in Bosnia?

Two utterly different philosophies and policies, applied to places a few miles apart, which for eighty years were in one country.

Foolish Consistency? Or Foolish Inconsistency?

From Westphalia to West failure?

Now a new book by Norman Davies is coming out: Vanished Kingdoms. It looks at how the ebb and flow of history builds, removes and sometimes (Poland; Montenegro) restores polities.

Here at Browser is a super interview with Professor Davies, who as usual is on lively, challenging form:

People who have their eye on short-term, contemporary events and the world around us tend to forget this. I sometimes think they imagine the world politic to be a chessboard, where you play games, have a crisis, and then you put all the pieces back and have another game. Well it’s not like that. You can have a chessboard, you have players who are either pawns or kings or whatever, but the players themselves are always changing...

At the end of the Roman Empire, in the Byzantine period, the empire shrinks and shrinks until it consists of one city, Constantinople, and the Ottoman Turks can encircle it. There’s a final siege and the Turks go over the wall. The last emperor – number 156 or whatever – disappears in the fray, is killed, and that’s the end of the empire. This is, if you like, the guidebook to this story, to exactly what Rousseau is saying. No matter how powerful they may look, the time will come, as in the lives of men and women, when they die. It’s not a topic that people are eagerly looking at...

And the indigenous population of the region where Glasgow is – Strathclyde, as it’s called now – was Welsh. The chief hero of medieval Scotland was William Wallace. Wallace means Welsh. The Scots don’t tell you that. They had this theory that William Wallace’s family came from Shropshire, which is how they try to explain how a Welshman could be in what they thought of as Scotland. They didn’t know that these Welsh of the north were not intruders from Wales, they were there long before the Scots...

Part of the afterlife of the Soviet Union is, of course, in Putin’s brain. Putin is ex-KGB, an organisation founded to preserve the Soviet state which failed completely. Putin must have a terrible sense of failure. In fact, he has said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest catastrophe of modern times. So sure, Putin, in the back of his mind, would like to reassemble if not the Soviet Union, then some sort of empire, a broader Russian-dominated grouping which would be a modern version of the Soviet Union. I don’t think he’s got a cat’s chance in hell...

And finally:

Is there a European identity strong enough to overcome the national identities of its member states? It’s touch and go. But I’m an optimist. I think there will be one hell of a crisis. I doubt if the EU will disappear, but it will be severely chastened. And it will have to put its house in order. Otherwise it will become one of the vanished kingdoms. It wouldn’t be unprecedented for that to happen.

Read the whole thing. It's crackling with wisdom and interest.

Then order the book (on Kindle too):

You've no doubt been wondering what sort of food Brits throw away, as compared to (say) Poles.

Here's the subtle analysis from W-Wa Jeziorki:

... we agreed as to why this should be. Polish bread - which is wonderfully tasty, nourishing and generally fabulous - has an 'best by' date measured in hours. Because taste is all-important, flour-enhancers are not used, and so Polish bread goes stale very, very quickly. In Britain however, Mother's Pride, Sunblest and other white-sliced is so stuffed with chemicals that it will last a week and still be OK to smear Robertson's jam over (35% fruit content).

The massive amounts of fruit and veg that Brits chuck out can be put down to the semi-effectiveness of the 'five a day' campaign that the UK government has been promoting for years, getting the average citizen to increase his or her intake of fresh fruit and vegetables. Brits will buy (often out of guilt rather than conviction) large amounts of the stuff, but will then not be bothered to actually peel, squeeze, cut or otherwise prepare it and then eat it. (Am I right?) And so vegetables and fruit become number one and two food products that are wasted. Poles, I think on the whole have a healthier attitude to both money and food, so less gets binned (food accounts for a higher percentage of outgoings in Poland than in the UK).

But is this right?

... the fact that 39% of food gets wasted at the point of production (crops rotting in the fields, unpicked), and another 19% in transit to the point of purchase.

No. I think the point in the EU report is that of all food which ends up wasted, 39% gets wasted at the point of production etc. Not the same as saying that 39% of all food is wasted in this way.

Or not? Do we really have Soviet levels of wasted food effort?

In any case, as recycling efforts increase apace, it's less clear what is 100% 'waste'. Our council now take away food waste. Does it matter that much if some crops get ploughed back into the land, or some tomatoes here and there get recycled rather than eaten?

Last week I attended the UK premiere of a new Polish film, Battle of Warsaw 1920. It gives a lurid and (inevitably) hugely simplified account of one of Europe's greatest battles.

As I left the cinema I found myself wrestling with a grim and unwelcome question. Had it been the worst film I had ever seen?

The historical story is gripping and extraordinary, and almost totally unknown here in the UK.

Basically, after the Russian Revolution Lenin followed the instruction manual and believed that there could be no true Marxist revolution in backward, peasanty Russia - revolutions needed angry industrial proletariats, such as the one in defeated German. To mobilise and reinforce the German workers the newly formed Red Army had to get to Berlin, which meant trampling over the newly re-formed state of Poland. The Poles advanced into Ukraine to try to stop the advance further east, but failed.

So westwards the Red Army advanced, with a young Stalin as political commissar. However, as they closed in on Warsaw the Polish forces led by Jozef Pilsudski effected a daring if not desperate circling manoeuvre and managed to divide and defeat the Soviet attack. The result was a huge military disaster for the Kremlin and a momentous set-back to Soviet ambitions to spread revolution into wealthy Europe.

There is an ignominious British angle here, with the UK's trades union movement doing everything possible to help the Russian communists and stop the British government sending military assistance to Poland. Thanks for that, comrades.

Thus the basic story is remarkable and full of both historical and human interest. Charles de Gaulle was involved as a young French officer helping the Polish army. Stalin fell out with the other revolutionary leaders over the causes of the defeat but survived the criticism. In 1937 Stalin took revenge on General Tukhachevsky who as a remarkably young officer had led the Soviet attack on Poland - Tukhachevsky (by then a Marshal of the Soviet Union) was tortured into confessing to be a German agent and summarily executed. Were the horrendous Katyn massacres of the Polish officer class in WW2 Stalin's pay-back for the way the Polish side treated thousands of Soviet prisoners after the Warsaw battle?

Any film made today about such colossal events has to present at best only a few key features and leave out myriad others. Is the end product nonetheless presented with artistic style, intelligence and at least some subtlety? In this case the answer is a glum No.

It starts off quite nicely, with a young Trotsky leading the communists into action, and hints of intellectual liveliness and jolly decadence in newly independent Warsaw.

As it winds on almost everything is reduced to a banal Polish cliché. The battle scenes are of course tumultuous, and remind us just how horrible it was as these vast armies charged at each other and ended up fighting hand-to-hand. Yet even here the frequent glimpses of severed limbs and hideous wounds are somehow presented in a revoltingly prurient way. The 3D effects were lame and annoying. 

Otherwise we see nothing but an assembly-line of boring stock characters each there to 'represent' something obvious. The cruel, crafty hard-drinking Cheka commissar and primitive drunk Red soldiers defiling ruined bourgeois property. The uncertain priest who finds the courage to lead a Polish charge to slow-motion massacre. The smirking alcoholic Polish military officer trying to take advantage of the heroine back in Warsaw; he gets demoted and dies a perfunctory death. The heroine herself, a yummy naive cabaret dancer who gets drawn into the war as a nurse and ends up like Rambo, mowing down Reds with a machine gun.

There's more. Much more.

A drunk but plucky Cossack. Two camp Warsaw intellectuals who quickly manage to crack the Soviet military codes. A few walk-on gormless peasants with hearts of gold. The hero who (absurdly) ends up with the Soviet forces as a potential propaganda victory and sees for himself the depravity of communist methods: quite how he seamlessly ends up back on the Polish side defending Warsaw after this 'treason' is not explained. We see repeated shots of bulging-eyed Red Army fanatics bawling 'to Warsaw', to remind us what the film is about. Slowmo crosses spin through the air amidst the carnage to tell us that the Soviets were evil atheists.

The Polish victory is known in Poland as the 'Miracle on the Vistula'. Here the hero is comprehensively bayoneted in slow motion by a fleeing Red. But at the end the heroine finds him in hospital, alive. Another miracle!   

The film accordingly sinks to the level of poor propaganda. The artistic value is negligible. The internal Soviet leadership conflicts and other international angles are ignored. Many scenes will touch Polish hearts as part of the detailed Polish collective national memory of the battle, but leave everyone else on the planet unmoved or puzzled or even vexed.

Is it for foreigners to be too critical? After all, Poland's post-WW2 Stalinists tried for decades to wipe this battle and the later Katyn Massacres from the Polish national consciousness. Part of the very point of films such as this is all about Poland 'reclaiming' its history back from Moscow. A more than laudable aim.

Yet not all laudable aims are done well. Andrzej Wajda's film Katyn won many strong reviews for its subtle handling of that horrendous event. I'll be amazed if this banal new film by Jerzy Hoffman gets anything close to the same praise. 

Undaunted by the fact that it is the current EU Presidency, Poland goes to the polls today to elect a new Parliament.

Given that Poland has had a stable government for four years and arguably the best economic record in Europe during our ghastly economic crisis, one might have expected the Citizens Platform (PO) party led by Donald Tusk to romp home.

Yet (wild generalisation advisory) Poles have a lugubrious tendency towards finding fault with themselves, even when things are going well, if not especially when things are going well. Plus the typical continental proportional representation system makes an overall majority for any one party almost impossible, while giving space to turbo-charged populists to break into Parliament. This adds an almost random element to possible post-election coalition-forming.

So in recent weeks the main opposition party Law and Justice (PiS) led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski (the brother of former President Lech Kaczynski who died in the Smolensk air crash) has closed the gap with astute populist positions, and might even be in the lead among 'likely voters'.

I am not close enough to the grainy detail of Polish politics any more to be able to offer you any sense of the underlying momentum in the campaign. Indeed, even when I was closely following the 2005 elections my crystal balls did not deliver and I got the result completely wrong. I had to grovel to London for forgiveness.

Here is a fine example of the Economist doing what it does best, giving a readable and pertinent analysis by someone who really understands a complicated subject:

Mr Tusk's short speech during his Tuskobus stop-off in the eastern town of Ryki illustrates the problem. "Choose who you can trust to steer Poland through this storm without people having to suffer, because elsewhere in Europe people really are starting to suffer", he declared. In other words, vote for me because it could have been worse.

This is a hard sell, and doesn't make up for the fact that PO failed to deliver its 2007 campaign promises, and that for all its "green island of growth" status, Poland still has an unemployment rate of over 10%, rising to 25% among the young...

... Still, although this campaign has shown what a wily political operator Mr Kaczyński can be, and put the fear into a perhaps complacent liberal establishment, the chances of a PiS government remain slim. The party has no obvious coalition partner, and PO's allies in the PSL party look set to retain their parliamentary status.

Ultimately, this election may be remembered not for the tenaciousness of Poland's conservative forces, but the emergence of their very opposite. Not all the young people disappointed with PO have drifted towards PiS. Some favour the party set up by Janusz Palikot, a rumbustious defector from PO who is running on a staunchly left-wing, anti-clerical platform.

A disciple of the "the more outrageous the better" school of publicity, Mr Palikot has blamed the Smolensk crash on the irresponsibility of the Kaczyńskis, and promises to legalise marijuana, gay marriage and abortion. Polls suggest these proposals could earn him as much as 8% of the vote on Sunday. Many outsiders accept the stereotype of Poland as a conservative Catholic country. The truth is a lot more complicated, and interesting.

One expert tells me that Law and Justice peaked a bit too soon and so are likely to come second behind Citizens Platform. But that might not matter if against all expectations Kaczynski can form a blocking majority in partnership with other smaller parties and, perhaps, set up some sort of ostensibly 'technocratic' government. Such a seemingly far-fetched scenario depends crucially on what smaller parties cross the line and make it into Parliament, and what price they demand for being cooperative.

The chances are that Donald Tusk will be better placed to form a new coalition. But don't bet too much on it.

If he does win, will he keep Radek Sikorski as Foreign Minister? Radek has been Poland's longest serving Foreign Minister and is doing a big and good job to modernise the Ministry. Plus he is one of Poland's most popular politicians. Maybe a bit too popular? But where to put him? Back to the Defence Ministry, now an unhappy place after the findings that Ministry pilots were in part to blame for the Smolensk crash? Would he accept that?

The one thing which is more or less certain is that unless Citizens Platform win by a storming margin, the ensuing coalition wranglings will drag on nicely, leaving the current government to see out most of the remaining weeks of the Polish Presidency.

All in all? Not much change.  

One of the interesting things about the parts of Europe East of Berlin is the way 'Western' ideologies are there but still have only shallow roots.

Sexism rears its ugly head! Male politicians on all parts of the political spectrum just can't resist making remarks which (they think) show them in witty gallant form but in fact peeve many feisty women voters.

Former communist turned Social Democrat PM Leszek Miller is the latest one to blunder, by suggesting that ugly women repel voters.

Previously current PM Donald Tusk tried this quip:

... "outrageous and unacceptable" remarks made by Mr Tusk in response to a question from Sylwia Bialek, a female radio reporter, about whether Polish preparations for the EU presidency, which the country assumes in July, were "buttoned up"...

"I'm looking at the lady's dress and buttoning up is not what comes to mind," said an amused prime minister, adding that he "liked the summer".

Another Polish Civic Platform politician earlier this year was asked about homosexual marriages, and replied: "you can forget about gay men but I would gladly watch lesbians".

This one reminded me of the visit of the then newly elected Polish PM Marcinkiewicz to London in late 2005. I was in the car accompanying his senior accompanying officials into London before the meeting with Tony Blair.

At that time there was a flurry of interest in the UK gay political world about the fact that the new Polish President Lech Kaczynski previously had banned a Gay Parade in Warsaw. Attempts were being made to drum up some protests during the Marcinkiewicz visit.

In the car I warned the Polish side that they might find it hard to believe, but the 'gay rights oppression in Poland' noises might attract UK media attention during the visit, so they needed to find a good press line.

"How about "We don't much like gays - but we really like lesbians!" as the press line?", came the droll reply.

I did my best to suggest that that one was unlikely to help squash the story in their favour. 

In the event there were two or three gay rights demonstrators politely holding up some small protest signs near Mr Marcinkiewicz's hotel. Tony Blair did not raise the issue when they met. So much for later wild burblings from Labour that the Tories in Europe were cosying up to raging Polish homophobes. 

Life moved on.

As it does. Read this wonderful article by Walter Russell Mead on how a strong steady tide of individualism is eroding the 'moral' positions of the Christian Right and the 'economic' positions of the Secular Left:

If anything, what we are seeing is the continued triumph of individualism in American life — a force before which both the Christian Right and the Secular Left must bend.  The Right sees the advance of individualism and fears that all is lost, that the socialists are about to take over; the Left sees the rise of libertarian individualism in economic life and policy and fears that this is part of an impending total triumph of the Right...

Like virtually everyone in the United States, I find that this national tendency toward an ever greater, ever more radical individualism is not without problems.  Even as I revel in some aspects of our increasingly free social life, other aspects of it give me pause. 

But this great human movement toward less external constraint on individual freedom seems to be the essence of American life.  It is the mighty Mississippi River flowing down our national history, fed by tributaries from its right and left banks, gathering force and volume in its irresistible progress from colonial times right up through the end this very week of DADT. 

That river will roll on, swamping teacher unions trying to prop up the old school bureaucracies, drowning religious groups fighting issues like gay rights.  The trend toward greater individual choice is too deep, too strong, too wide to be dammed (or damned, for that matter).

And so I say it again to all my many friends on the secular and religious left: relax.  The Christianists aren’t coming to lock you up in camps.  George W. Bush was the first president to choose a vice presidential running mate with an openly lesbian daughter; the dark night of fascism isn’t preparing to fall. 

The Left likely must resign itself to a long term trend of less compulsory social solidarity and more individual economic freedom; the right must accept that individuals in our society can only be compelled by their own consciences on an ever growing list of social and cultural issues. 

And that mighty mood of change is working its way through Europe too - yes, even to Poland.

Last week in the Krynica Economic Forum in deep Poland, a highlight was the exchange between former German President (and former IMF Director) Horst Köhler and Polish Finance Minister Jan Vincent-Rostowski.

In essence, Kohler argued that the time had come to stop throwing good money after bad in the Eurozone - countries should accept responsibility for their own performance in racking up unsustainable sovereign debt. Rostowski insisted that that was all very well - in the meantime the Eurozone could face drastic problems if the ECB did not respond to a 'classic Keynesian moment' by printing Euros on a vigorous scale.

As I understood their respective points, Germany was offering the ailing Eurozone patient some stern medicine - Poland retorting that medicine of that strength would be good in other circumstances, but now would kill the patient.

After this presentation a senior European expert told me that the Eurozone was on the 'verge of disaster'. If it struck and confidence crashed, great swathes of EU economic life would simply grind to a halt, including many German exporters. Germany knew this but did not want to accept it. I asked him how close to the Verge of Doom the system now was. "About two inches".

During his presentation the erudite and impassioned Rostowski quoted Tarquinius and the Sybil, helpfully reminding the large audience what that story was about. Basically:

The story of the acquisition of the Sibylline Books by Tarquinius is one of the famous mythic elements of Roman history. The Cumaean Sibyl offered to Tarquinius nine books of these prophecies; and as the king declined to purchase them, owing to the exorbitant price she demanded, she burned three and offered the remaining six to Tarquinius at the same stiff price, which he again refused, whereupon she burned three more and repeated her offer.

Tarquinius then relented and purchased the last three at the full original price and had them preserved in a vault beneath the Capitoline temple of Jupiter.

Rostowski's argument was that at each stage the EU had ducked the tough but correct option for tackling the Eurozone crisis, so that the cost of fixing it now was massive. 

Where do things stand now?

The real crisis, as we know, is not Greece but the EU banking system which has lent EU governments unsustainable sums to fund inefficient state spending. So, in the inevitable mess, where should the losses fall and be distributed?

Has Germany decided that if colossal sums must be spent to salvage something from the Eurozone rubble, it is better to invest that money in sorting out the big EU banks most in danger and let those national governments who are unable to keep up go their own sorrowful way? Agonising, but character-forming. See this hard-core analysis by Hussman Funds:

As for any public funds approved for use by various European governments to stabilize the financial system, IMF chief Christine LaGarde is right - those funds would be better used to recapitalise banks (ideally, restructured banks) rather than using those funds as a transfer to Greece in hopes of making bad debt good.

What is particularly unfortunate is that all of this is unfolding in a very predictable way, but the constant attempts to ignore reality and defer the inevitable restructuring is imposing enormous costs on the public. 

The misery and disruption to lives round the planet caused by hubristic European political elites are going to be incalculable.

Basically, the European Union has run out of policy manoeuvre-room. Its taxes are already too high, its populations too old, its bureaucratic dead weight too heavy. The existing Treaty structure does not work, and the latest German Constitutional Court ruling effectively (and wisely) reduces even more the scope for German leaders to dump debts on the German public.

Undaunted, the Euro-elites realise that they need a new Kardelj-like attempt to cure the sick cow, this time by changing the rules to give themselves even wider powers. In other words, EU treaty change.

This forces to the fore the UK dilemma. How to avoid a Euro-federalist concentration of power among Eurozone members directly affecting in substance everything the EU does? Euro-federalists have a problem too - how to get accepted such far-reaching national sovereignty-surrendering Treaty changes without referenda in the UK and (probably) elsewhere? 

This is impossible. The sheer intensity of the integrative forces required to make Eurozone 2 work will affect the EU as a whole, not least in the reach of Eurozone authority as upheld by European Law. 

The issues are already clear:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday that the European Union must enact treaty changes in order to strengthen cooperation during the debt crisis...

Osborne said it was an "absolute requirement" that any EU-wide treaty would safeguard Britain's interests in key areas.

"It is crucial that Britain's interests on financial services, on the single market, on competition are protected, that we're not outvoted by the euro zone, that there is not an in-built euro zone caucus into the system ... that we are able to continue to have a decisive say on things that affect us."

Asked about opting out of other parts of the EU, Hague said: "It's true of the euro, it could be true of more areas in future. In fact we may get ahead as a result of being outside."

Luckily the key speech the Prime Minister needs when the crunch finally arrives has already been drafted...

Here at Project Syndicate is Poland's Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski:

Ten years later, it is clear that the fanatics behind those attacks miscalculated in two central respects.

They regarded Western democracies as weak – unwilling or unable to respond to their evil extremism. And they expected Muslim communities and countries around the world to rise up and mobilize behind their millenarian worldview...

The West’s effective crackdown on domestic extremism has tended to drive would-be terrorists – now often based in remote parts of the world, where they hope to operate with impunity – to higher levels of technical sophistication.

As a result, painful policy dilemmas arise, and they can divide even the closest allies. How best to respond if some states cannot or will not take the necessary steps to thwart terrorist planning on their territory? How to deal with evidence of terrorist planning gleaned from states suspected of practicing torture?

... Our societies are more resilient, open, and diverse than ever. That said, we are not doomed to succeed. Even well-intentioned social policies can have unwelcome consequences. Above all, we should be grateful to the police forces and intelligence agencies whose unflagging hard work and dedication far away from the public eye help keep us safe...

The 9/11 terrorists’ second blunder was to believe that their terrorist attacks would inspire irresistible surge in anti-Western Islamist extremism ... far from leading some sort of worldwide Islamist revolution, the violent fanaticism of Al Qaeda and other organizations now resembles a repulsive, but manageable, form of ideological toxic waste.

Read the whole thing.

Andrzej Lepper, turbulent leader of Poland's left-populist Self-Defence party, yesterday was found dead. Apparently by hanging himself in his party office in Warsaw

Where to start? The English Wikipedia page gives the basics of his lively career, describing how he came from a modest rural family background and with little formal education worked himself up and up to become one of Poland's leading politicians.

At the peak of his political fortunes his party won 11% of the vote in Poland's 2005 general elections to become the third-largest party in parliament. Lepper himself likewise came a more than respectable third (15% of the first round vote) in the 2005 Presidential elections shortly thereafter.

There ensued a messy period featuring an unhappy coalition government between the Kaczynski twins' Law and Justice party plus the two leading populist parties in parliament, Self-Defence and League of Polish Families. Lepper became a Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture. This eccentric arrangement duly crashed under the weight of excessive bickering.

In the ensuing 2007 elections both Self-Defence and League of Polish Families blew up and crashed from any seats in Parliament; the Citizens Platform government led by Donald Tusk swept to a heavy win. Thereafter Lepper has been a forlorn, diminished figure, beset by footling private and political scandals and family difficulties.

* * * * *

What to make of Lepper's rise and fall? He was a classic 'transition' spoiler phenomenon, echoing Zhirinovsky in Russia although nothing like as, ahem, vivid:

Lepper by contrast was much more 'stolid' if not oddly conventional. He rose to prominence during the turbulent post-communist 1990s by the usual populist tactics (noisy championing of the 'little man' especially in rural areas and periodic road-blocks) but necessarily (and unlike Zhirinovsky) calmed down as his party won more and more votes.

By the time I went to Poland as Ambassador in late 2003, Lepper's party was doing well, with polling oscillating up to 15% or more (a result good enough to secure a strong Parliamentary presence).

As Ambassador I had a supposedly tricky decision. Poland was a new EU member. Lepper was likely to do well in the 2005 elections and perhaps get into government. Should I meet him to see for myself what sort of leader Poland might get, as British Ministers might need to engage with Lepper at EU meetings? Or would doing so give him an undeserved and wrong-headed boost of credibility/respectability/legitimacy?

This raises a profound point of diplomatic technique, which in turn links to one's view of politics and political change.

My view was that I should go and see him, even if that might dismay some Polish liberal-minded friends.

First, my own main duty was to help London understand what was happening in Poland, which meant dealing with Poland as it was, not as polite Warsaw opinion wanted it to be.

But second, part of the drama of the whole post-communist transition was all about slowly but surely calming down politics after the brutalising effects of decades of one-party stagnation. Foreign diplomats engaging with people - especially the 'problematic' ones - in a friendly but direct way was all part of the process of restoring normal life and respectable standards. It opened horizons and raised expectations: once a populist gets a taste of diplomatic life and the odd canapé, s/he tends to want to stay in that magic elite circle, which means moderating behaviour and language.

Putting it another way, by engaging with people you do give them a respectability they may not deserve. But you also get leverage you otherwise would not have. Precisely because they get a new sort of vicarious respectability from meeting you, they now have something new to lose. And, usually, they are very loath to lose it. 

Slightly undignified for the diplomats, and vexing for mainstream middle-class liberal locals. But it works.

London thought hard about this for all of two seconds, and agreed. So off I went to call on Mr Lepper in his party offices.

Needless to say, Lepper was quite good company: canny, interesting, folksy-funny and genially opportunistic. We had a pleasant and sensible exchange which achieved a few seconds of notoriety in the Polish media. My main problem was not staring too obviously at Lepper's caked-on fake almost orange sun-tan.  

And lo! it transpired that when Law and Justice pipped Citizens Platform to the post in Poland's 2005 general elections, the Kaczynski twins decided to form a coalition with the two populist parties who also got into the Sejm. Lepper became Deputy PM! And Minister of Agriculture! Horror!

Apart from the fact this strange coalition government as a whole was a priori dysfunctional and sub-optimal, political life in Poland spluttered on adequately for a while.

Lepper himself did well enough as Agriculture Minister. He was clever and diligent. He mastered the brief, popped over to Brussels for Agriculture Council meetings and made no blatant policy mistakes. A visiting House of Commons Committee met him in his office and had a more than sensible exchange with him about how Poland's fragmented farming sector was coping with the CAP and so on.

In due course the Kaczynski twins collapsed the arrangement and called the 2007 elections which brought Donald Tusk's Citizens Platform a sweeping victory. Both Lepper's party and League of Polish Families were more or less wiped out as political forces, just as Jaroslaw Kaczynski had planned.

This, of course, is why I respected the Kaczynski twins as a powerful force for normalising Polish politics, even if that view much vexed the Warsaw chattering classes. The Kaczynskis really were concerned to tackle 'social exclusion' in Poland, by bringing lots of frustrated rural and small town voters (many of them the human flotsam and jetsam of WW2 displacements from today's Ukraine who ended up dumped on collective farms) into the political mainstream. 

Lepper's Self-Defence and to a lesser extent Polish Families delivered handy lumps of these rural, marginalised voters who otherwise might drift away to more extreme ideas. Hence the cynical brilliance of the Kaczynkis' scheme: they would create this unworkable populist coalition government, steadily suck out the electoral juice from their partner parties, then throw away the discredited leadership husks.

All of which went precisely to plan. Polish politics today is more 'inclusive' - and far more stable - as a result. A huge gain for Europe.

Let me tell you about one meeting of EU Ambassadors hosted by the Austrian Ambassador soon after the new improbable coalition government was formed in 2005. 

One senior colleague who should have known better proposed that the EU Ambassadors send back monthly reports to capitals about the problematic state of human rights in Poland following the creation of this disastrous new extremist/populist government.

I argued that this was wrong in principle. It was very good news for Europe that these supposedly populist parties now had a taste of government. What was better for the EU? Having these people getting occasional smart lunches in Brussels and learning about modern negotiation of good EU standards, or manning road-blocks to protest EU policies?

The whole point of 'transitions' in post-communist countries was, I said, slowly but surely to bring marginalised people into the normal mainstream political process. That was what the Kaczynski twins were doing, much to their credit. Yes, some of the people concerned did not meet usual high standards of Euro-fastidiousness and table-manners. But the best way for them to get there was through patient engagement, not patronising sneers. The fact that Eurosceptics Lepper and Polish Families had entered government and now would start to engage with Brussels processes was a real success for European integration, not a failure!

And, I concluded, if we were really concerned about 'rising extremism in Europe', the desecration of Jewish graves by Islamist fanatics in some major EU capitals might be a much better place to start. 

This terse view won the day, and the proposal was promptly dropped.

Conclusion?

Transitions from communism or other embedded dictatorships necessarily take a long time - decades. Be patient. Deal with these societies as they are, for all the social and moral contradictions.

When in doubt, err on the side of engagement and inclusivity. Be democratic. For all their flaws and failings, people like Andrzej Lepper can play a necessary and ultimately unexpectedly positive walk-on role in normalising things.    

Remember the Smolensk air-crash which killed President Lech Kaczynski and so many other senior Poles?

Disagreement has rumbled on about how far mistakes or misjudgements made by the Polish aircrew and/or Russian control tower were responsible, but a major Polish report has now accepted that a good slice of the responsibility is on the Polish side. The Defence Minister has resigned.

Part of the problem after any such calamity is working out the key facts: what precisely happened and why? In this case the Poles have been dismayed that, as they see it, the Russian side has not been as forthcoming as it might have been. Hence the usual conspiracy theories.

One way to improve information understanding immediately after any accident is to have vital data stored not in aircraft 'black boxes' but streamed in real time to different key places for storage and (as necessary) analysis. This super Wired piece describes how that might be done quite easily and fairly cheaply.

In the Smolensk case, the disagreements between Warsaw and Moscow over the causes of the accident might not have vanished had both sides had all flight data streamed to them during the flight, but the areas of disagreement perhaps would have been much reduced - and much more quickly articulated.

Real-time transparency. You can't beat it.   

Nosemonkey praises the energetic start of the Polish Presidency, not least a feisty speech by Polish PM Donald Tusk.

The text of this important speech is not (as far as I can see) on the Polish Prime Minister's official website, even in Polish. So we have to do with some quotes as reported by the Guardian:

The passionate and optimistic defence of the EU from the Polish leader was completely at odds with the mood in Brussels and other EU capitals, where commitment to the union is being eroded by the rise of populist Brussels-bashing, squabbling leaders, and soaring mistrust between member states.

In defiance of the gloomy European zeitgeist, Tusk said: "The European Union is great. It is the best place on Earth to be born and to live your life."

An odd non-sequitur here:

He dismissed talk of the EU encroaching on the sovereignty of the nation states of Europe, referring to his own experience as a Solidarity activist in communist Poland under martial law and Moscow's control.

"Until quite recently we saw a real restriction on our sovereignty," he said. "We were truly occupied by the Soviets. It was truly an occupation. That's why for us EU integration is not a threat to the sovereignty of the member states."

Donald Tusk boldly names. And shames:

"I just want to resist the phenomenon of the new Euroscepticism that is everywhere," he said.

He was not referring to the intellectual hostility to the EU that is the traditional British position, Tusk said, but a more insidious and hypocritical trend in countries long committed to Europe.

"The different phenomenon I am talking about is the birth of a type of Euroscepticism which does not declare itself. But it's the behaviour, the words, the actions by politicians who say they are for the EU, support further integration, but at the same time suggest actions and decisions that weaken the community."

He singled out the French and Italian campaigns, supported by many others, to use the north African upheavals to reintroduce national border controls and curb the travel liberties enjoyed under the EU's Schengen system.

As the Guardian notes, it is no wonder that the EU is popular in Poland:

He leads the only country in Europe not thrust into recession by the financial crisis, the fastest-growing economy in the EU, and where the EU enjoys high popularity ratings of more than 80%, not least because of the €10bn (£9bn) pouring in every year from Brussels, making Poland the biggest beneficiary of EU largesse.

But he nonetheless just isn't happy - for Poland 'more Europe' = 'more money', especially when provided by someone else? See this tiresome framing of the issue:

In a dig at David Cameron, Tusk also lamented the months of trench warfare looming over how to divvy up the next medium-term EU budget, describing the contest as one between those who want the budget to be "one of the main tools for European integration" and those who want "to give as little as possible to Europe".

One of my earlier postings here ruminated on the fact that the verb 'to complain' seems to feature rather prominently in Polish thinking:

Polish is the only one which teaches you the verb 'to complain' - narzekać  - as one of the first words in the textbook to learn:

narzekać {vb} (also: skarżyć się, użalić się, żalić się, skarżyć) to complain

 

narzekać {vb} (also: skarżyć się na) to complain about

 

narzekać {vb} (also: gderać, dokuczać) to nag

 

narzekać {vb} (also: biadolić to kvetch {vb} [Amer.] [coll.]

I think that Donald Tusk is doing a lively job leading Poland and setting out a sense of Polish ambition for the European Union. Goodness, it needs one.

But for my taste the tone of this first speech has just a bit too much of the archetypal lofty Polish professor sternly lecturing sullen students to reinforce his iron-clad intellectual and moral superiority.

He'll find out the hard way that if he wants to get the UK to pay more money into the pot, telling us that we are mean-spirited is unlikely to be the best way to succeed, the more so since huge slabs of the EU money pouring into Poland now are already contributed by UK taxpayers. Whatever happened to gracious gratitude?

Crawford says that Britain has created more jobs for Poles in Britain than the Polish government since EU membership was extended to another 10 countries last year. He visualises Blair or Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, telling the new member states that the UK wants to help them, despite their “rudeness and ingratitude”.

“We like you so much that we are proposing in the budget a huge new transfer of funds to you on a scale which will give your people the greatest boost in 1,000 years.”

Still, even in these dark policy moments we can always rely on good old-fashioned central-European sexism to cheer us up:

Feminists in Poland have condemned as "outrageous and unacceptable" remarks made by Mr Tusk in response to a question from Sylwia Bialek, a female radio reporter, about whether Polish preparations for the EU presidency, which the country assumes in July, were "buttoned up"...

"I'm looking at the lady's dress and buttoning up is not what comes to mind," said an amused prime minister, adding that he "liked the summer".

Hot!

By the way, you're no doubt baffled by the fact that Mr Tusk has a Polish name which is pronounceable even by the dimmest foreigner (albeit with rather unexpected elephantine implications). It's because he comes from a minority community in northern Poland known as Kashubians - take it from me, the Kashub language is very 'specific'. 

As Poland starts its EU Presidency, the long-awaited announcement is made: HM Ambassador in Poland Ric Todd is moving on, to a significant and sunny new posting.

All is not (yet) quite lost. Lots of scope for transplanting modern progressive  European values to the conservative locals - and flying that flag.

Plus on those balmy tropical evenings time aplenty to practise one's grammar:

Equally, some of the stereotypes in Britain of Poland being a grey, concrete covered country with bad weather and intolerant people is (sic) also completely wrong

Here's how the next UK Ambassador to Warsaw should arrive. Properly dressed.

Update   this is well put by Ambassador Todd as he tries to explain some simple truths about UK/Poland relations down the decades. And does not succeed!

I have failed utterly in my attempts to combat this anti-British thread. It is impervious to facts.

For example we got a “demand” that a British medal be given posthumously to General Sosabowski because Britain had denigrated him and not given him a medal to honour his war-time service.  

When we replied that there is no evidence that Britain ever denigrated General Sosabowski and furthermore we gave him a medal when he was alive (as well as asylum for him and his family) the answer came back that we should give him another one, because Britain denigrated him..

Poland now assumes the six-month Polish Presidency for the first time.

Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski sets the scene:

“EU success story” gets some 600 Google News hits. “EU crisis” gets 14,000 hits.

What has gone wrong? Some people have a blunt answer: “Too much Europe!” EU structures and policies are said to be creating more problems than they are solving: over-complex institutions, over-ambitious integration (above all the euro zone), over-centralisation of decision-taking. We see a disturbing decline in confidence in European solidarity.

But for Poland, European integration is not a crisis. It’s an inspiration.

Twenty-two years ago when communism ended, Poland’s GDP shrank by 12 per cent. Inflation ran out of control. Key export markets vanished. We had to build a modern democracy and a thriving market economy from scratch, while disentangling ourselves from the Warsaw Pact.

With huge efforts – and generous help from our European partners – we have succeeded. Poland is growing at over 4 per cent per year. We are now the sixth largest economy in Europe, and one of the top 20 economies in the world. Poland is the only EU member to have maintained positive growth through the recent economic storms.

It is no surprise that surveys find Poles expressing strong confidence in the EU. All our success would not have been possible without the investment in institutional stability and solidarity which the EU delivered.

It is not enough to be optimistic and positive. We also must be realistic. The EU faces painful decisions.

Poland will not accept that the answer lies in less solidarity, or less integration. That is the sure path to disintegration...

Well put. But given the severe strains in the Eurozone (Poland says it wants to join but is not (yet) a member, so its role in Eurozone top-level discussions must at best be modest) and everything else going on, can any one Presidency really make much of a difference?

Poland wants to push ahead EU ideas for improving EU-wide e-commerce and better EU-wide patent arrangements - all good stuff but no prospect of short-term improvements arising therefrom.

The main success of Poland's Presidency is likely to be on the foreign policy front, achieving better/closer EU relations with Russia, Ukraine and Moldova and maybe (subject to developments) a new EU move to engage sensibly with Belarus. That last one depends on Belarus being able to open itself up to a new approach: not easy as Russia unemotionally turns the energy and other screws on the erratic President Lukashenko.

Poland also can aim to help set an intelligent hard-headed EU policy framework for helping North Africa through its various 'transitions'.

Meanwhile the next vast row over the EU Budget trundles into view. Here is Open Europe's analysis on the first and inevitably absurd Commission proposals.

The point here is that the Commission deliberately overbids to start the negotiation process, hoping and expecting to lurch the heart of the debate in the general direction of More Europe.

In this case as it happens Poland's Janusz Lewandowski is leading the charge in Brussels on behalf of the Commission. Polish wiliness is evident in the proposed package. 'Less' on CAP/agriculture, more on new EU-wide energy investments, 'efficiency savings' and so on: the EU Budget is very small, really, so we can and should afford to increase it [the more so since Poland is the largest net recipient] ... 

But the key innovation is new EU-level tax-raising powers, said to simplify the way the EU is funded.

This is clever. Why?

Because any normal person will agree that the current mechanisms for funding EU spending need reform - too cumbersome, too many anomalies. Even London in principle is ready to talk about dropping the magnificent UK Rebate in exchange for deep reform to both how the money gets to the EU and what the EU then spends it on.

So Lewandowski is hoping to froth up alleged popular support across the EU for some sort of EU-levied tax on financial transactions to get new EU-level tax powers included as part of the final deal: "Y'all say you want reform and simplification - here's the neat way to do it!"  

To be really clever he might add that national vetoes on any agreed tax level will still apply: if the UK and all other EU member states agree to launch this scheme  in 2018 at tax level X, it can not be increased (or decreased) unless all agree in future. That (it could be said) gives a not insignificant level of real reassurance to national governments that Brussels can't run out of control.

To which we all say: "Nice try - but no thanks."

Because as we have seen in the USA, once the federal centre starts taxing it over time can and does run up insane debts. Somehow or other a national 'lock' on future increased tax increases inexorably will be nibbled away, as has happened with all the other EU policy vetoes we once enjoyed.

Plus the practical implementation of any EU-level tax will create a tsunami of new intrusive Brussels-driven mechanisms, rules and procedures which will erode national powers and set all sorts of over-arching legal precedents for a lot more of the same.

In short, this is the thin end of a huge fat wedge. Another one-way expensive ticket to a Lot More Europe. Which, in current circumstances, most of the EU Givers are not going to want to buy, however noisily the EU Getters cry that it is all for the best.

Anyway, my writings on the way all this works in practice (see many previous postings and this long account here) are a definitive guide to the months if not years of bad-tempered haggling which will now unfold. So check them out.

That epic Budget Battle is for tomorrow.

For today, even Eurosceptics can and should pleased that in the past 20 years Poland has made such an impressive transformation from its appalling communist past to be a credible and dynamic European country and, until 31 December this year, head of the EU family.