Blogoir

A nicely turned piece in the Guardian by Kamil Tchorek on how a more mellow Jaroslaw Kaczynski missed becoming Poland's new President by only some 200,000 votes.

Update: the final gap in Komorowski's favour was a full million votes out of some 17 million cast. Look at the map via the link to see how Poland divides fairly neatly down the middle in its voting instincts. 

And note the final percentages:

Komorowski 53%

Kaczynski 47%

Precisely what I predicted after the first round. Good to see that old diplomatic analytical magic still works. A bit. 

Two weeks ago I made my prediction about the Polish Presidential elections:

My bet this evening? Komorowski to edge home in two weeks' time, something like 53% - 47%

Earlier today it looked as if Kaczynski might have squeaked home, but that bet looks more or less to be the final result. Jaroslaw Kaczynski has conceded defeat on the basis of the exit polls. The gap between the two candidates may narrow somewhat as the votes are counted, but not enough to allow Kaczynski to win.

Kaczynski did very well to close the gap to this extent, and his Law and Justice Party are well placed now to consolidate their position as the leading opposition grouping, or even actually win the next Parliamentary elections.

As for Bronislaw Komorowski, he will have to show some guile in leading Poland without seeming the prisoner of Citizens Platform, the governing party. PM Donald Tusk has been able to blame former President Kaczynski for blocking various reforms - now he'll have to take more responsibility for specific political outcomes.

It will be interesting to see whether Radek Sikorski survives as Foreign Minister. Some muttering is heard that Komorowski may prefer him shunted back to the Defence Ministry with eg former communist turned wily independent-minded social democrat Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz replacing him, as a gesture to the centre left.

In any case, well done Poland for managing the Smolensk disaster and its painful political aftermath with such dignity and attention to due process.

Both Kaczynski and Komorowski have campaigned honourably and well. A model of how modern democracy should work, acting as both a source of national stability - and a moral value in itself.

The second and final round of Poland's Presidential elections takes place today.

Bronislaw Komorowski (Citizens Platform) is hoping not to get pipp'd at the post by Jaroslaw Kaczynski (Law and Justice), twin brother of President Lech Kaczynski who died in the Smolensk disaster.

Which of them is the more 'right-wing'?

I have written before on the difficulty of applying our political labels to Polish politics:

A much better way to look at these things which gives a spread of views for Poland at least is to have two different axes:

• Economic:  State - Market
• Belief:  Religion - Atheist

Looked at this way much more articulated differences appear between the parties.

Civic Platform occupy a blob mainly on the Market side but dipping down into the Atheist camp. Law and Justice occupy a blob which overlaps significantly with Civic Platform but which is also notably more Religious/State. The former communists rebooted as social democrats are a blob with both Market and State but notably more Atheism.

As Poland is, yes, a Catholic country it is not surprising that the two parties (Civic Platform and Law and Justice) which now express in different ways a not too extreme combination of State and Market but with more Religion than Atheism occupy nearly 75% of the popular vote.

True to form, Jaroslaw Kaczynski has been making more overtly 'State' noises to try to woo poorer voters, although as you know Citizens Platform too have been moving in an etatist direction recently. Kaczynski even said some nice things about communist-era leader Gierek ("a communist, yet also a patriot"), a brazen nod to former communist voters.

On private morality issues (divorce, gay marriage, abortion, women's rights) there is nothing between the two candidates. If anything Komorowski is rather more 'conservative' by instinct at least.

On EU questions, Komorowski and his party are notably more EU-enthusiastic than Kaczynski and his. But Kaczynski has cleverly added some new, more mellow European tones to his post-Smolensk rhetoric and talks about greater CAP support for Polish farmers - not an issue where he might easily find common ground with the UK in the looming EU Budget negotiation.

That said, insofar as there may need in the coming years to be far-reaching EU measures to tackle the Eurozone and other structural problems, Kaczynski and David Cameron should easily agree on a rebalancing involving more member state and less Brussels. Kaczynski squeezed in a flying visit to London during the campaign.

Who's going to win?

It looks increasingly like a re-run of the 2005 election, when Citizens Platform Donald Tusk had a solid lead after the first round but was overtaken in the final days of the campaign by Lech Kaczynski.

So, don't be surprised if Komorowski fails to win in the final count, after leading comfortably in the polls for many months.

If Kaczynski does win, it will be down to his brilliant political calculation and canny execution carried out amidst intense private pain after the Smolensk crash - he and Lech were as close as any two siblings can be.

Life in Poland will proceed fairly well, with a mainly market-inclined, technocratic Citizens Platform in government dealing with the Polish Body, and quirky, grumpy, and very patriotic Law and Justice keeping a close eye on the Polish Soul.

A good outcome for the Conservatives here as well.

While we are thinking about Poland, check out the blog of Monica Ogrodowski, an American of Polish descent now over in Poland on a Fulbright award.

She gives us a beautifully illustrated piece about the Tapestry Triennial exhibition in Lodz, once the 'Manchester of the East' - a huge C19 regional centre for cloth-making with many amazing vast mill complexes, now being transformed into trendy studios and shops/hotels/offices.

Scroll down to the corsets made from candy wrappers - Finnish, of course.

And the cross-stitched holes in old car doors (Lithuania).

Elegantly presented.

The 2010 Presidential elections in Poland, brought forward following the Smolensk air disaster in which President Lech Kaczynski died, have been taking place today.

The results indicate that as expected Bronislaw Komorowski of the Citizens Platform party has won a clear victory over Jaroslaw Kaczynski (Law and Justice) with Grzegorz Napieralski (Democratic Left Alliance) making a respectable showing in third place after some good TV performances. The final results may show the gap between the two front-runners narrowing as rural votes favouring Kaczynski get counted.

As no candidate won a 50% + 1 share of the vote, Poland now sees a second round run-off in two weeks' time between Komorowski and Kaczynski.

Komorowski has had a largely undistinguished election campaign but has maintained his lead over Kaczynski, who did quite well in toning down his previously truculent image and playing deftly to try to win the post-disaster sympathy and national unity vote.

A central part of the Kaczynski twins' appeal for the past twenty years has been their strident insistence that Poland's former communists have been given too many privileges and still manipulate politics excessively. This suggests that the centre left Napieralski votes now up for grabs in the run-off vote will not easily move to Kaczynski, even if the Kaczynski rhetoric likes to emphasise 'social' concerns and the supposed elitism of the urban Citizens Platform leadership.

That said, Kaczynski voters are likely to be more motivated in the run-off process, so the expected lower turn-out will tend to favour Kaczysnki. And Poles will see force in the Kaczynski argument that it is in Poland's interests not to let one party (Citizens Platform) control both government and Presidency.

So while Komorowski is the clear favourite, he will have to work hard to win. He lacks glamour and makes strange gaffes, although he also has no special unpopularity. He will be brooding on the 2005 result when Donald Tusk likewise had a first-round lead but was overhauled by Lech Kaczynski who presented better in the TV debates. Maybe the tensions at high levels in the European Union favours Komorowski somewhat, as his party present themselves as much more credible in making an impact for Poland in EU circles.

My bet this evening? Komorowski to edge home in two weeks' time, something like 53% - 47%.

Which in the circumstances will have been an excellent result for Jaroslaw Kaczynski. But do not rule out a Kaczynski win just yet.

Update:  the early polls published after the close of polling underestimated the Kaczynski performance by over-estimating the Komorowski result.

With most results in, it now looks as if Komorowski has secured only 41% against 37% for Kaczynski, a result which gives Kaczynski a respectable chance to win the run-off.

A Polish reader Ludwik Kowalski now long established in the USA has sent in a link to this unusual free online memoir, namely extracts from his diaries which he wrote while growing up in the USSR then Stalinist Poland:

This is my “book of life.” It is based on what I recorded in diaries, first as a teenager in the USSR and Poland, then as an adult, in Poland, France and the USA. It traces my evolution from a dedicated Stalinist into an active anti-Stalinist. Romantic affairs and other preoccupations are not totally ignored...

My notebooks were kept in an old green metal trunk. In late 2009, at the age of 78, I finally decided to open it. Up to then, I had never re-read the diaries. Their total volume was approximately three cubic feet.

One thing became clear as soon as I started reading. Translating everything made no sense, considering poor composition, numerous repetitions, and too many details. But I began to see my life more clearly, and decided there was enough substance to be of interest to others...

Here is my story in a nutshell. Born in 1931 in Poland, I spent my early childhood, up to age 15, in the Soviet Union. During that time my idealistic father became a victim of the Stalinist regime; like millions of others, he was arrested and sent to die in Siberia.

My mother and I returned to Poland after the end of WWII. That is where my undergraduate and graduate education were completed. In 1957 I went to France for postgraduate studies. After returning to Poland in 1963 with a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics, I was invited to a scientific conference in the US, and became a research associate at Columbia University. My teaching career began in 1969...

Well worth a look.

First, it's free.

And second, it is striking to read about the intellectual and emotional evolution from a boy who wrote cheery poems praising Stalin to ahighly educated man who finally grasped the truth about the Soviet regime and its cruelty to millions of its own people.

A handy To-Do list for William Hague as he tries to drain the FCO swamp:

...

End PoMo gimmicks: Issue instructions that any Ambassador using an Embassy flagpole to fly a gay rights Rainbow flag, a Save the Whale flag or any other trendy private ‘campaign’ symbol will be sacked without notice.

Restore respect: close down immediately all Diversity and Anti-Bullying HR units – issue a simple rule that all staff are expected to be polite and helpful towards each other and the public.

Stop asking stupid questions: dismiss anyone proposing that outside consultants run FCO Staff Questionnaires – use the FCO Intranet to let FCO staff themselves help choose awkward questions about management/morale.

Ban sellotape: notices are for notice-boards alone, not walls and lifts.

End apartheid: ask Francis Maude at the Cabinet Office to stop his people demanding Risk Management matrices and Ethnic Diversity surveys based upon crude racial categories as in apartheid South Africa. Insist that ‘diversity’ questionnaires must make provision for Poles, Romanians, Slovaks, Jews and other significant communities.

Promote ability: insist too that any ‘diversity’ audit hereafter includes the following option:

I demand that I be measured on my ability alone. The colour of my skin, the number of floppy/dangly bits on the front of my body and my religious beliefs are all none of the government’s damn business.

That lot should get FCO people moving back in the right direction.

Plus plenty more where they came from.

Remember the playful mermaids and mermen from HM Embassy in Warsaw?

The Independent reports that some of them have got into trouble at the posh Beaver Club over at the Canadian Embassy:

Quite what took place in the embassy – a three-storey modernist construction in French limestone and aluminium which won architectural awards when it opened in 2001 – remained shrouded in inter-governmental niceties last night. Canadian officials declining to comment on "conversations between states".

But whatever happened, it was sufficient to prompt a formal complaint from the Canadian ambassador to Poland, Daniel Costello, to his British counterpart. A source told The Independent: "It would be fair to say that the Canadian side made their displeasure clear."

My spies (who as you all know are everywhere) tell me that the result of suspending these officials (NB not quite clear to me why or on what basis they were suspended or by whom) has been a ghastly backlog of visa applications (Warsaw is now a regional 'hub' for visa applications by non-EU citizens).

And some further, hem, unhappy events with replacement staff sent out to try to deal with the confusion?

As soon as my back is turned, this is what happens.

Tsk.

Here is my long interview (in English) with George Matlock over at Radio Orla, a successful London-based radio station with a strong Polish angle.

I normally can't bear to watch or listen to myself after doing such media slots. But I started to listen to this one - I found it quite interesting, not least because I can't remember a word I said. It includes a long account of my famous email leak, and all sorts of other things.

Set aside a good hour, curl up on the sofa with a drink. And relax to my droll but dulcet tones.

Update: The EU (improbably) as ... Dirty Harry. Click through to the wonderful link.

* * * * *

If I were a diplomat from Mars reporting back to HQ on the wheeler-dealings of the pitiful earthlings in this part of the planet, I'd be starting to suggest that the days of the UK's full membership of the EU are numbered.

Not so much because the UK masses reject the EU (although plenty are very unhappy with it). But because the EU is now mutating fast into something the UK masses (myself included) will not accept.

See this elegant analysis by the BBC's Paul Mason of the implications of the vast Eurozone New Deal whose sheer size has impressed the markets (for now) - emphasis in the original:

The fact that this is called a "special purpose vehicle" - a term we all remember from Enron, Lehman and the London Tube PPP - gives the game away. Like all SPVs it is designed to make unclear who ultimately shoulders the risk. Since "Europe" does not have any money itself, the implication is that Germany, France and Italy now stand behind the rest of Europe. But the implication will be hidden behind bilateral deals, clauses etc.

Why it is radical becomes clear if you compare it to the Bank of England's move to print £200bn. That £200bn shows up on the "balance sheet" of the Bank, not the British government. But the Bank of England is ultimately an arm of the British state - whatever its formal constitution says. Ditto the US Federal Reserve. However, the ECB is a central bank without a state to underpin it...

The move to printing money is a signal that the EU has to create something more like a state to back the ECB.

Not only is the EU now committed to much stronger fiscal - i.e. tax and spending - oversight. It is now implicitly committed to becoming an economic super-state...

But because every step of the EU project has been taken by elites, with the populations left to work out what was happening months and years later, we can now trace very accurately where the risk has been transferred to. It has been transferred to politics: will the people of Europe accept the consolidation of the eurozone, with the loss of economic sovereignty that represents?

In short, in a matter of two years, we have transferred risk from the banking system to the state finances to the streets. And the risk is only partly dissipated by this transfer...

Was not this the point made by Warren Buffett about all those ever-more clever financial tricks to carve up and sell on dodgy sub-prime US mortgages - don't touch them, as you can't say where the risk is?

If the risk is now 'on the streets', as we can see from those latest German elections the German streets are unhappy with being compelled to take on this burden with no clarity about what it all means. Nor are the Greek streets too impressed either.

Paul also has this remarkable paragraph:

We are only beginning to get our heads around the detail of this deal but its geo-strategic and moral implications are clear. Big states have bailed out little states and will demand reforms that change the lifestyle of people in these states forever. Northern Europe has effectively seized control of southern Europe. The eurozone is on a path to becoming a supra-national state-like entity.

In which case, as the Euro-cocktail party starts to get tense it is time for the UK to start to sidle politely towards the door and make our excuses to leave?

Because if there is one thing that is not doable, it is that northern Europe will get southern Europe to 'change its lifestyle'.

Look at the stunning effort made by the international community in Bosnia, where for years we in effect ran the place. No impact whatsoever on their 'lifestyle'.

This is because what changes a 'lifestyle' is not 'demands' from outside. Such demands if anything reinforce a lifestyle, as people close ranks against bossy or intrusive foreigners (see Bosnia).

No. The only thing which makes a real difference are people taking decisions for themselves, then accepting the consequences and learning from them - adjusting or not as they deem sensible.

Which leaves eg Poland as a country on track to join the Eurozone in a very difficult decision.

To stay substantively independent? Or to merge with Greater Germany - on Greater Germany's terms? Watch Eurosceptic Jaroslaw Kaczynski's ratings rise in the coming Presidential race.

Our UK position is different. We are not in the Greater Germany Eurozone, and have no plans to join it. But, if that is where hard EU decision-making increasingly will have to be made to keep the whole structure wobbling on, won't its decisions tend to impact negatively on the non-Eurozone EU members?

Maybe we need - and are going to get whether we like it or not - two or even three separate smaller European Unions. 

One for those states which want to be part of Greater Germany.

One for those states which prefer a much looser, more relaxed association.

And one for all those Balkan states which find all this too complicated and difficult, and just want to snooze in the sun...

Update: Maybe it's not Greater Germany but Greater France, given the way the Germans folded in the key negotiations to keep the Euro attached to reality?

Question         

What’s the only thing on any political party’s mind after winning an election?

 

Answer           

The next election

 

Why?

 

What else do political parties think about?

 

Having won an election because their policies and style had the most appeal, the winners think only about how best to sustain that appeal next time round. Everything they do from the moment of victory is now part of their record they must defend down the road.

 

Implementing their promises is a significant part of that, but only part. They know that unexpected events will happen to create public dismay and annoyance; that their control over the sprawling bureaucracy is less than they think, so getting new/better things done will be fiendishly difficult; and that for the coming period their defeated political rivals will now have the luxury of having only to attack, not to defend.

 

In short, democracy is tough. Conveying Authority as all these squalls and more come along is all-important.

 

Coalition politics make that difficult job far harder. It is hard enough to trust one’s own people to be loyal and sensible. How to trust someone else’s?

 

Take the Conservatives right now. Just say they strike a political deal with the Lib Dems involving the Lib Dems getting several respectable Ministerial jobs in government.

 

Both coalition parties will know that at the next election (which might come quite soon) they will be fighting once again for market share.

 

David Cameron will have a particularly tough job keeping his backbenchers happy.

Most newly elected Conservative MPs will not have formal government positions. They will have not that much to do in Parliament, other than vote when told to do so. Taking up their constituents’ moanings about the local drains or the planned waste incinerator is unlikely to satisfy their ambitions for long.

 

Those backbenchers could turn nasty if the coalition looks to be holding back key Conservative policies - the more so if among their ranks are serious people bitter at being moved aside after all their hard work to win the election, just to make way for scurvy Socialist-Lite rivals.

 

Yet somehow a coalition is formed. Hurrah. A nation rejoices. Shares shoot up.

 

The new Ministers from the two parties arrive at their new Ministries. Unctuous officials show them their offices and give them instructions on how to claim their allowances. [Thinks: “Crikey – not bad! I never knew that we got all that!”]

 

Then the first bundles of papers arrive, with Recommendations. How to play it?

 

Should the few Lib Dem Ministers work flat out to show what they can do? Or will they fear that the more numerous and better placed Conservative Ministers will somehow grab the credit for anything which they do well, while being quick to paint the Lib Dems as incompetent when problems arise?

 

How should awkward facts be handled across Whitehall? Would the Conservative Ministers want to share embarrassing (for them) information with Lib Dem Ministers? Or would they hold back, fearing that such information might mysteriously leak to Conservative disadvantage?

 

Civil servants are meant to be loyal to the ‘government of the day’ and scrupulously neutral in political terms. Uncharted new professional dilemmas for senior British civil servants throughout the system will emerge.

 

How to handle papers within a Lib Dem Ministry which show that the Minister plans policy initiatives which in some run counter to Conservative policies or positions?

 

How to handle papers in a Conservative-led Ministry on an issue where you know a Lib Dem Minister elsewhere will be unhappy or might try to block? This could happen on much EU business, where the Lib Dems might be expected to be more ‘flexible’.

 

In principle Lib Dem Ministers should see all intelligence reports with relevance to their policy areas. Would that happen? How to check if things are being held back?

 

In a typical Continental proportional system with party lists, it is very difficult for voters to get rid of senior politicians. These people get used to managing the machinations of coalitions. They in effect comprise one united ‘establishment elite’ who take it in turns to have leading jobs.

 

The convoluted unhappy 2005-2007 coalition in Poland between the Kaczynski twins’ Law and Justice party and the populist parties Self Defence and Polish Families showed another way to approach these problems. Law and Justice slyly discredited those parties’ leaders even though they were part of the government, then collapsed the coalition and called new elections. In effect Law and Justice greedily sucked the electoral juice from their coalition partner parties – and threw aside the husks. In the new elections Self Defence and Polish Families were all but obliterated. Law and Justice lost that contest to their main rival Citizens Platform, but emerged as the unchallenged main Polish opposition party. Not bad.

 

For David Cameron the ideal outcome of the next election will be that the coalition prospers but the Conservatives get the credit, winning over enough Lib Dem voters to enable a Conservative government to be formed without Lib Dem politicians.

 

For Nick Clegg the ideal result will be that the coalition is seen as a success because the Lib Dems are in it. Thus the Lib Dems need to use their limited presence in government to score some policy hits and establish sufficient credibility to win over Conservative (and Labour) voters next time round. Preferably through a better (for Lib Dems) new voting system.

 

The inevitable divisions and crises are yet to come. If a coalition or some lesser form of Parliamentary pact is formed. in the early days both sides will have an interest in being nice and pretending to make the arrangement work well. A heavy UK majority of voters should be satisfied with it.

 

Above all, in two respects Conservative and Lib Dem MPs en masse will be united.

 

It will be good fun for everyone making a hefty bonfire of ghastly Labour legislation and burning it. And jointly jeering at the much reduced Labour Party snarling in frustration on the Opposition benches as the bonfire smoke gets in their bloodshot eyes will have unmatchable aesthetic appeal.

 

 

 

If anyone needs something different from life, and/or wants to hear me talk at some length about my time in Poland and other issues, here are details of my long interview last week with London's excellent English/Polish radio station Radio Orla.fm.

Broadcast tomorrow (Sunday) and again on Monday, and available thereafter for a while on the Internet.

In English, with the odd Polish word thrown in.

 

Some random thoughts on latest dramatic developments in the UK, all the more random for lack of sleep.

First the Really Good News.

As for the feverish politics, note the following.

It is not only that the new Parliament is 'hung', ie no party has an overall majority. It is so exquisitely awkwardly hung, opening the way to manifold permutations and machinations in theory and practice.

The point of our system is that a government should have a working and reasonably reliable majority in Parliament, enabling key business to be done.

That majority mainly depends on the total number of seats each party wins. But not exclusively.

So NB distinguish:

-  a coalition (where two or more parties do a deal to maintain a Parliamentary majority, with MPs from those parties getting roles in government). In principle the most robust outcome, but it raises very awkward issues of sustained trust as between the key Ministries needed to get the different coalition elements on board. (See eg the miserable experience of the Law and Justice party in Poland with the populist parties Self-Defence and Polish Families from 2005-07)

-  a ‘positive’ Parliamentary pact, where one minority party sets up a government on its own with some sort of formal understanding that other parties will join it to vote FOR certain key laws in return for not bringing the goverment down any time soon

-  a ‘negative’ Parliamentary pact, where one minority party sets up a government on its own with some sort of informal understanding (or maybe a de facto expectation) that other parties will not vote AGAINST key laws - perhaps because no-one wants or can afford a new election for a while

In each case the issue in practice turns not on how many total seats the parties have, but instead on what operational expected majorities from here and there can be mustered in Parliament going forward.

Many permutations possible with varying degrees of potential stability, involving varying degrees of bluff and nerve.

NB the issue of avoiding new early elections will loom large in the respective leaders’ thinking - expensive, and what might be different/better/worse if they happen?

Not to forget that in mainland Europe you tend to get coalitions/alliances between parties. In the UK you get coalitions/alliances within parties.

By which I mean that the key party leaders have to brood on how far their own party would accept in practice different possible deals.

Would the Eurosceptic trending Conservative Party risk a split over EU policy within its own ranks if a deal was done with the Europhile Lib Dems?

Would the Lib Dems risk a split between its own socialists and liberals if they cut a deal with the Conservatives?

Would Labour (or Conservatives) be able to deliver a vote on electoral reform to satisfy Lib Dem requirements? (The point being that all MPs elected under the current somewhat idiosyncratic but well understood voting system will tend to want to keep those arrangements. Any 'reform' is bound to leave some MPs likely to lose out next time round, a turkeys-unimpressed-by-Christmas-scenario).

Damon Runyon may or may not have said this:

The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet

In this context, the widest range of options and (vitally) sense of momentum is with the party which has much the biggest haul of seats and the highest number of votes, ie the Conservatives. Plus neither Labour nor the Lib Dems can afford a new election soon.

Which is why on balance after a flurry of uncertainty and desperate babbling brought about by sheer exhaustion, I expect David Cameron to lead the next UK government for a while under some sort of formal or informal arrangement as outlined above.

If this happens, an uneasy game of chicken will ensue: the Conservatives in effect will be saying to Parliament every day: "Vote us out if you dare - and face the consequences"...

Update: good analysis trending in the same direction from Brian Barder.

Election Day across the UK looms. The Labour Party are set to lose power. Hurrah.

But will they lose badly enough to be obliterated? Or somehow only enough to stay in business and start scheming anew after some ritual blood-letting?

Here's my own New Labour Story.

I joined the FCO in 1979 as a naive and truculent leftist, fresh from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in the USA. Trade Unions - good! Mrs Thatcher - horrible! How dare she and Raygun stand up so defiantly against the Soviet Union and all those of us who only wanted Peace?

Then I was sent to communist Yugoslavia, where it dawned on me that so many things I had thought and been told about Socialism were simply untrue, or (worse) calculated lies.

I came back to the UK in 1984 a fervent believer in the utility (and morality) of free markets and Western democracy. I played my part in helping the Thatcher government end apartheid in South Africa. Then she fell, but I was in London for the early Major years as Communism ended in the Soviet Union and across Europe.

Off to Moscow and then Bosnia. I missed the twilight lugubrious Major years and the huge acclaimed election victory of my old college chum Tony Blair.

A real sense of new energy was there, and the FCO raced to embrace it. Change! And Hope!

As a supporter of democracy, I saw no reason for concern. After all those long Conservative years it was time for a change. And Labour seemed to have the right ideas for keeping public finances in good order.

My own first significant encounter with New Labour came in 1997, when Robin Cook visited Sarajevo. He was impressive, if somewhat distant and cross. But also obsessed with the media - he rudely kept the Bosnian Foreign Minister waiting for the best part of an hour as he fiddled with a press statement.

I later heard from a colleague who had first hand from Robin Cook his corrosive, cynical philosophy: "If anything goes well in the FCO. I'll take the credit as Foreign Secretary - if anything goes badly, the FCO takes the blame". This of course slaps the convention of Ministerial Responsibility in the face. Cook did not care.

In late 1997 PM Tony Blair visited Sarajevo. We (Embassy/FCO) had a huge row with No 10, as his Campbell team refused to let him meet any Bosnian politicians - only a photo-opportunity with the troops was needed for UK press purposes, thanks.

This absurd position was eventually overturned, but Blair paid only a fleeting visit to Sarajevo and bizarrely left Bosnia without saying a single word in public to Bosnia. An irresponsible and, again, downright rude way to behave, driven by his odious spin-doctors.

However, seeing advantage in being tough on the causes of international crime, Labour did do a good job in changing course and using British troops to start to arrest war crimes indictees. Not that they did all they could to get Karadzic to surrender? 

Anyway, I was cooling off at Harvard when NATO bombed Kosovo, returning to London in mid-1999 with a big promotion, thanks to Robin Cook who had valued my directness. He played a significant personal role in the concerted international effort to support free elections in Serbia and Croatia, not least in holding the line against any EU concessions to Croatia's ghastly President Tudjman. The fall of Milosevic and the work done by HMG to bring that about was Robin Cook's finest foreign policy achievement. I ran that policy in London.

Yet by then the glamour of all that new Labour energy and sense of reform was wearing off. 'Diversity' had transformed itself from welcome creative fairness and flexibility into neurotic processes. Anti-bullying initiatives were swarming in the FCO, the one placid place in the world where anything like meaningful bullying was almost non-existent. Endless 'change initiatives' and political correctness were demoralising everyone.

And lawks, death by Targets:

Yet don't I dimly recall that it was Ministers in this Government who made us draw up Strategic Priorities in the first place? Yes, it's all coming back ...

First we had seven.

Then we had eight.

Then we had nine.

Then, gloriously, we reached ten!

Now we are reduced to a measly four Key Policy Goals, albeit with free added Surge. All in some 260 weeks.

Pathetic replacement of substance by interminable process. Brought about all because Gordon was squabbling with Tony and Peter, wooing Clare and Robin and Jack. Babies.

As the years passed a new sense of incompetence and sheer sleaze emerged. The FCO had the extraordinary indignity of getting Margaret Beckett as Foreign Secretary. 

In her previous Ministerial job she had visited Warsaw with her husband in tow as one of her generously publicly funded Advisers. He said nothing but fell asleep in meetings with Warsaw Ministers. Too ghastly for words.

Margaret Beckett was smart enough in an Old Labour way. But she knew nothing about diplomacy and international relations, so burbled away instead about Climate Change. The FCO atrophied.

Then as Ambassador I had to lead the UK position in Poland when Tony Blair made significant concessions on the UK Rebate in the 2005 EU Budget negotiations.

By then the splits and dysfunctionality at the heart of New Labour were merely embarrassing. No 10 officials dismissed Gordon Brown as Mrs Rochester, the mad woman shrieking in the distant attic. 

As it happens, on that one Gordon Brown was right. The UK had a superlative position after the French and Dutch referenda blowouts on the EU's Constitutional Treaty. We could have forced key reforms and really redefined the EU on our terms.

Tony Blair made the fatal strategic mistake of wanting to be loved, extending the hand of friendship to the French while they were flat on their backs like upside-down tortoises, gasping for air. And he got nothing in return.

No, not quite right. What he got was the Lisbon Treaty, which Blair/Brown bundled through Parliament in the face of explicit Labour election pledges that the British people would have a referendum. Maybe Blair thought that for this generosity he was a cert to be elected the first EU President under the Lisbon Treaty? Sucker.

So there it is. The election campaign splutters on. Tony briefly appears to tick the box of campaigning, but without trying. Gordon has shown what he really thinks about working people. 

Peter is already scheming about how to get David elected as leader after Gordon crashes.

What truly appalling people they all are. It's all about them, not about the country.

What's worse? Labour politics of irresponsibility? Or Labour aesthetics of  unrelenting vulgarity? Narcissism. In red polyester socks.

Labour once again have ruined public finances, causing damage which will echo down the generations. They have presided over sustained banal corruption among MPs. After stunning new public spending the UK's underclass problem is worse now than it was in 1997, an appalling if scientifically important outcome. It's official - state socialism is a Failure.

Our diplomatic network and underlying leadership have been badly damaged. Billions have been wasted on phoney international assistance, much of it channeled via the UN and EU and so lavished on European consultants.

Some diplomatic moves have been jaw-droppingly incompetent - see eg the Copenhagen fiasco. So much for the Mighty Brain of David Miliband, that gushy admirer of foreign communists.

Labour can't even grasp one simple implication of Diversity (and simple good manners, which I believe are still taught at Eton if nowhere else): be polite to foreign leaders.

All in all, a remarkable, historic disappointment, in outcome and philosophy alike

Somehow the Conservatives have not quite managed to lay out a clear, honourable alternative. With a record like Labour's no-one other than John Prescott's elderly relatives should be voting Labour ever again.

Yet Labour lingers on, helped by the armies of loyal collectivist serfs they have created in the BBC and countless public sector appointments. They can not campaign on their record, so they spread dirty sneers and fears. Such is the debased public space they have left us that some of this works.

It is left to Labour diehards like Brian Barder to rummage around in the slimy debris looking for a few nuggets of idealism - and to scrape together reasons for voting against the dreaded 'Cameron':

... there are at least two other powerful reasons for dreading a Cameron government:  first, the Tory commitment to repealing the Human Rights Act, one of the Labour government’s greatest and bravest achievements, and an indispensable bulwark for the private citizen’s rights against an over-mighty executive (and we can only guess at what the Tories would replace it with);  and secondly, the certainty that William Hague, as a committed Europhobe, enjoying the feverish support of the even more Europhobic wing of the Conservative Party, will destroy what little influence we still have in the EU, having already thrown his party’s lot in with a raggle-taggle group of right-wing, sometimes antisemitic, homophobic, neo-fascist European fringe parties when Britain’s natural partners are the moderate, liberal, socially responsible parties of the European centre, including the governments of Germany and France.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ... [wakes] ... has that sentence finished yet?

Huh? Where are the reasons for NOT voting Conservative? You've given us two reasons for voting for them!

The Human Rights Act can and should be replaced with something based less on European jurisprudence and more on common law principles. Good riddance.

And as for the EU, a government armed with a firm mandate against yet more ill-conceived 'integration' is just what we need as the whole EU project squeals at the seams.

* * * * *

At poignant moments like this we turn, inevitably, to Elvis:

The party's over
Your time is up
You've had your last pointless teardrop
Washed down in that broken coffee cup
This magic moment concludes when that cigarette ends
Did you get what you wanted?
Well I suppose that depends...

The party's over
Time we broke up
It always seemed like a bad dream
One where I finally woke up ...

Here is the long Mail Online account of the encounter between Gordon Brown and Mrs Gillian Duffy.

It squeezes more than maximum juice out of this fleeting encounter, yet the words of Mrs Duffy and the accompanying pictures are touching:

‘There’s been a development,’ she was told by a reporter from Sky News, whose microphone had been attached to the Prime Minister’s lapel.

‘I didn’t understand at first,’ Gillian reflects. ‘I went to sit at the back of the van where they played me the tape. Everyone was watching as they played it back. They had to play it twice to me. I couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t even quite sure what the word really meant. I called Debbie and had to ask her. Then I thought, why has he called me that?’

For a moment Gillian looks bereft. Then, gathering herself, she adds: ‘I saw myself later on telly and I had to laugh. Somebody asked me what I was going to do and I just said, “Oh, I’d best go home.”

‘Then I waddled off like a penguin, I looked so despondent.’

Subsequent interviews with Mrs Duffy brought out clearly that her main worry was the National Debt. Yet Gordon Brown seemed to pick up on her reference to immigrants from Eastern Europe as a sure sign that she was 'bigoted'.

Let me tell you a story.

Years ago when I was the FCO Resident Clerk - see my first-ever posting here - I would have regular visits from the fleet of FCO Messengers. These were people with the unglamorous job of sorting out all the different envelopes arriving in the FCO (including by tube), then taking them on trolleys round the building to the right recipients.

Not all these people were happy in their work. But the messengers working on the overnight shifts were cheery enough, and sometimes when my telephones weren't ringing we'd sit chatting in the Clerkery over a mug of tea, arguing the toss about UK and international politics.

The most fun I had (by then I was a raving Thatcherite, having lived in communist Yugoslavia) was with Red Jim, an unswerving and well informed Labour supporter who lived in Brixton. We'd hammer away at the role of the state and privatisation and East/West relations. Lots of laughs.

On one issue and only one issue Jim was strongly against Labour: immigration.

He had been appalled by the transformation of Brixton in his lifetime into what was by the mid-1980s a crime-stricken 'multi-cultural' poor area. He'd had no say in that transformation. Discussing it without being called a racist was next to impossible. He felt betrayed. And angry.

See now Arizona. A hot-bed of racism/extremism? Or simply one state in the USA grappling as best it can with the unambiguous failure of the federal authorities to control national borders:

I spoke this week to a lady who has a camp of illegals on the edge of her land: She lies awake at night, fearful for her children and alert to strange noises in the yard. President Obama, shooting from his lip, attacked the new law as an offense against “fairness.” Where’s the fairness for this woman’s family? Because her home is in Arizona rather than Hyde Park, Chicago, she’s just supposed to get used to living under siege?

Like Gillian Duffy in northern England, this lady has to live there, while the political class that created this situation climbs back into the limo and gets driven far away.

Think about it.

Wherever you live in the UK, 'planning' bureaucrats are likely to pore over any attempt you make to change the shape or look of your house. The state controls that in microscopic detail, so as to 'plan' how a neighbourhood shall look and develop (if at all).

Yet there is anti-planning when it comes to the 'look' of a neighbourhood from a human point of view. Residents of an area are allowed no effective collective say in whether the 'ethnic' character of their area (something real if undefinable) should be preserved. Even talking about it may be deemed to break the law.

This issue is painful for all political parties and tendencies, anywhere.

People do have all sorts of different ways of expressing group identities. Most people believe (or at least feel instinctively that there is such a thing as a collective identity different from the sum of individuals' identities. And they may value that group identity sufficiently strongly to want to defend it, by fair means or foul.

Bosnia's impenetrable ethnic problems are by now a banal example. Serbs, Bosniacs and Croats just do not trust each other to behave fairly if they achieve power. 'Bosnians' representing a different, shared identity get squeezed out.

Up the road in Switzerland people are trying to defend Swiss-ness by banning the building of mosques. In far Japan huge efforts are being allocated to developing robots to help the ageing population manage without mass immigration.

Down in Nigeria in March 'hundreds' of people were reported killed in ethnic violence. Back in Europe, Malta with a very specific identity has been pressing for help from larger partners on illegal immigrants from Africa.

And so on, round the world, all the time.

'Progressive' thinking ought to anguish most about the policy issues involved. Yet latterly it has given up, or to be precise been hijacked by 'anti-imperialist' extremists.

On the one hand Labour's 'multi-culturalism' requires enforcing respect for different cultures as such.

On the other, much of Labour's multi-culturalism means denigrating British history and traditions, which in practice requires the de-legitimising of mainstream 'patriotic' or national thinking especially where 'white' working-class people are concerned. Britishness or, God forbid, Englishness is at best highly questionable.

Above all, we know for a fact that Labour allowed mass immigration into the UK as an explicitly ideological project, aimed as an end in itself at literally changing the way the country looked and behaved, all to promote progressive agendas. 

Hence the real reason why Gordon Brown saw Mrs Duffy as, of all things, a bigot.

Mrs Duffy was a normal person, asking the sort of normal question about her neighbourhood's identity in a modest way, expressing a concern which would resonate with 99.9% of people round the planet in our confusing era of globalised everything.

But that very question and that very concern were enough to make Gordon Brown gruffly and immediately to dismiss her as some of racistic extremist, unfit for Labour purpose.

This exchange Reveals All about the darkest heart of the whole New Labour project since 1997: internalised, brutish, elitist arrogance on an unbelievable scale.

Nick Cohen in the Observer scrapes the bottom of the barrel in the hope of finding some lost scraps:

Alongside all Labour's scoundrels and freeloaders, you can still find honourable men and women who believe in equality and internationalism. Their presence shows that even if the party's leaders cannot make it, and even if it takes a gut-wrenching effort to make it on their behalf, there remains a case for voting Labour – despite everything.

Alas not. Because now we know for sure that Labour have used the language of 'equality and internationalism' for dangerously dishonest ulterior purposes.

They love 'the people'. They hate individuals.

Enough. Just go away.

Tim Collard, (a retired British diplomat who spent most of his career in China and Germany. He is an active member of the Labour Party) offers a jeer in the Telegraph at William Hague's sensible comment on the FCO Popegate fiasco:

William Hague, who expects to be in charge in King Charles Street in a fortnight’s time, has laid out the Tory position sternly and clearly. “A Conservative-run Foreign and Commonwealth Office would put a stop to such pointless time-wasting and insulting activities. Visits by international leaders should be handled with the respect they deserve and that we would expect to be extended to us.”

Collard then tries to 'fisk' this. Read it and see just what a flimsy, feeble effort it is.

Example:

And then “Visits by international leaders should be handled with the respect they deserve”. Well, that’s a bit double-edged; does he mean “the respect they think they deserve”? Is Mr Hague going to launch a new procession of Ceausescu knighthoods? What about the ones who “deserve” no better than a bullet in the back of the bonce? (I am not talking about the Pope here.)

The FCO has frequently been criticised for being far too obsequious as it is. May I remind Mr Hague that the purpose of high-level visits is to advance British interests, not to make foreigners feel good about themselves?

What?

Who invited the vile communist Ceausescu on a full State Visit to this country? Why, Labour of course.

Look, Tim, a word of advice. Please don't market yourself to Telegraph readers as a former diplomat, but then traduce elementary diplomatic courtesies and professional technique.

The way the Miliband FCO has handled this visit by the Pope has been an unambiguous disgrace on numerous levels.

Fact. Be a man. Take the hit for your team.

May I remind Mr Hague that the purpose of high-level visits is to advance British interests, not to make foreigners feel good about themselves? Obviously we will treat them with the respect and consideration necessary to influence them in our favour, but that’s all...

... Mr Hague, even if you do model your tenure of office as Foreign Secretary on the Red Army in Poland, you’ll still be dealing with a large number of very bright and perceptive people.

Our diplomats spend quite a lot of their time dealing with the vagaries and vanities of foreign statespersons. There is no way they are ever going to be forced to take these people seriously.

What? This is both patronising and stupid.

The problem is that foreign statespersons will no longer take our diplomats seriously, because New Labour have dumbed down the FCO to startlingly low levels of professional incompetence. Imagine the amazement of Vatican officials when this vacuous phenomenon appeared in Rome, flown there by UK taxpayers to do a serious job.

And what do you suggest by the insane idea that our diplomats need to be 'forced' to take foreign leaders seriously?

Not all foreign leaders are respectable or respectworthy. But there are few indeed who do not represent something significant in their own states or more widely.

The core art of diplomacy is getting on with people, especially those who are 'difficult' or problematic. Which is why it is essential to build up a cadre of people who understand subtle specific foreign nuances.

This is what the FCO had achieved, painstakingly built up over many decades and admired around the planet, until New Labour came along and blow by blow literally deconstructed those assets.

So whereas I myself fear that William Hague will not show the merciless Stalinist steel required to liquidate, torture and imprison FCO staff in anything like the way the Red Army brutalised Poland, I think he can do a lot by sacking a few senior people to catch the FCO's collective attention, firmly drawing a good old Polish gruba kreska under Labour misrule.

And start to re-emphasise basic standards of courtesy, professionalism and good sense.

The sooner the better.

I have just spotted this tragic story from 2005, describing how my own leaked email about the EU Budget Negotiations led to someone resigning from his media job in London!

With Polish emotion rather than western diplomacy, Kris wanted to recall Crawford to Britain “a country he does not know” and lecture him about what Poles are doing. Kris also commented in a very blatantly nationalistic way that Polish workers were now carrying on in Britain work once done by Polish pilots (a reference to the Battle of Britain of 1940).

The comments from Kris were not helpful in my editorial view. And instead of signing them in his personal capacity, he signed “redakcja (Editor’s Office) Radio HeyNow”.

That was the trigger for me to resign...

Cause and Effect.

George. If you are out there, get in touch. I owe you a drink.

With the state funeral of President Kaczynski completed, attention now will turn to the cause of the crash at Smolensk airport.

Not before a surprisingly weak article by Denis Dutton and Adam Chmielewski appears at Open Democracy:

The air-crash which decapitated Poland’s state elite may owe something to reckless behaviour, official negligence - and the flaws of modern democracy itself

The judgment must be that Polish officialdom has not learned the lesson of this recent tragedy. Indeed, there is a suggestion of grave irresponsibility surrounding this ill-fated trip. The fact that so many people of senior rank were loaded onto a single plane created evident risks and ignored the procedural rule that the president should not travel with others who occupy high state positions...

Polish politicians, as do those in most democratic countries, live in mortal fear of the media and the opposition. For years some of them have mumbled about the necessity of upgrading the government’s air-fleet; but no decision was made, for fear of the response that state officials wish to enjoy the luxuries of new planes at the expense of impoverished taxpayers...

We share the grief of this terrible event. But we also feel angry that a democratic state might have done such damage to itself through the irresponsibility or recklessness of its own officials.

Here is the comment I posted there:

[T]here are many subtle ways in which this accident might have been caused, which operate on a level which do not justify such bold conclusions as " reckless behaviour, official negligence - and the flaws of modern democracy itself".

Thus perhaps the pilot made an unaccountable mistake of fact - he eg misread the aircraft dials and acted accordingly. Or he made a mistake of judgement - eg he read the equipment accurately but made a wrong conclusion. Or as he approached the airport, the scale of the fog a few kilometres ahead on the ground was not evident; he acted properly with the level of information available to him

Or something perhaps was lost momentarily in translation or interpretation of ground crew instructions/suggestions (the crew communicated with the ground in Russian, not the usual English).

Plus there may have been psychological factors in play. President Kaczynski will not have wanted to hear Russian suggestions that the plane divert to Minsk, occasioning a tedious car journey and very late (and therefore humiliating) arrival at Katyn. Did he order the pilot to take an undue risk? Or did the pilot not need to be ordered, preferring not to pose the question and risk a row?

And maybe, all things considered, the risky course would have been safe had it not been for one extra tall tree which happened to be in the flight-path? Had the plane taken a chance yet landed normally, this article would not have been written.

My point is that a huge amount of what we all do, governments included, often comes down to very fine judgements which are tricky to analyse accurately afterwards when things go wrong.

Buying a new expensive aircraft for official civilian travel (and not eg an extra F-16) may or may not be a good decision. But what if a brand new plane had crashed like this one because accumulated micro-decisions combined with abrupt localised thick fog and one very tall tree? Remember the excellent Airbus which crashed over Siberia because the pilot let his child play with the controls?

Are such tragedies really symptomatic of 'deeper' problems? Or just part of the natural way we manage risk at all levels every day everywhere, a consequence of which is that now and again some really bad things happen?

Would striving to prevent every possible accident (as per the ruinous 'precautionary principle') instead create new, different disasters?

Other good comments there too.

It is not clear to me why it takes so long to acquire then publish the data from the Black Box. Some facts are oozing out in an unsatisfactory way.

The Polish/Russian media are saying that the Box did not show that the President urged the pilots to attempt a risky landing, and that there were audible screams in the final seconds. There are suggestions that 'intimate' exchanges from the voice recorder will not be published.

President Kaczynski for sure would have been deeply unimpressed with any suggestion that the plane divert to Minsk or Moscow because of adverse weather conditions.

He would have known that following the successful Katyn commemoration featuring Polish and Russian PMs Tusk and Putin, his separate commemorative event risked being spoiled by media tittering over his 'foggy' foreign policy or somesuch.

Plus he might well have suspected that the Russians somehow were exaggerating the weather conditions if only for the pleasure of seeing him make a long and tedious and embarrassing drive to Katyn.

So were those sentiments or something similar conveyed to the aircrew? Or did they know that and not need to ask the President for a view.

One way or the other, does it matter?

Had the pilot taken a calculated risk of some sort and landed safely, we never would have known.

My own guess is that it was a combination of the absence of normal air traffic control facilities, the fact that conversations were proceeding in Russian, the difficult weather, and maybe (ultimately) some sort of pilot misreading of the altimeter data which brought the aircraft down.

The faster the full data set is made public, the better.

President Lech Kaczynski and Maria Kaczynska have been buried with the highest Polish honours in Cracow.

Some memories of people whom I knew on the doomed flight to Smolensk.

Such as former young communist Jerzy Smajdzinski who adapted well to democracy and rose to become Poland Defence Minister. I recall him chuckling over lunch with another former hardened Leftist, UK Defence Secretary John Reid, as they mused on their shared youthful fascination with Gramsci-style dialectics and their current senior roles in the NATO alliance. He was to run as centre left candidate in the 2010 Polish Presidential elections.

And Janusz Kochanowski, Polish Ombudsman, who supported a senior UK mediation event at the Royal Castle in Warsaw and had many distinguished British connections.

Ryszard Kaczorowski, the last Polish President-in-Exile, who was honoured by HM The Queen during the State Visit to London of President Kwasniewski in 2004. 

Grazyna Gesicka, one of the impressive group of PiS women MPs and a huge expert on EU processes, who joined me at the Residence in Warsaw for lunch to brief me on the mysteries of how Poland planned to try to spend its European Union funds.

Mariusz Handzlik, an unfailingly cheerful and positive senior member of the President's office, who worked closely with the Embassy on many visits and policy issues - at one of my final lunches at the Residence in Warsaw I tried to explain to him what Gordon Brown's move to No 10 might mean for UK/Polish relations. Our mutual friend Ryan Bromley has set up a website in his memory.

Stas Komorowski, previously one of the best Ambassadors in London. After years of battling he regained his family home on the edge of Warsaw which had been confiscated by the communists (to do that he had to buy new dwellings for the families living there), and he and his wife Ewa hosted a beautiful annual garden party there. He was a strong, principled and effective negotiator for Polish interests at the MFA then Defence Ministry.

Izabela Tomaszewska, the ever-correct, friendly and courteous woman who led Maria Kazcynska's office.

And, of course, Lech and Maria Kaczynski themselves.

Maria Kaczynska was charming, modest, very private and sincere. She came to the Residence in June 2007 for one of our last diplomatic receptions, an exhibition of portraits by Basia Hamilton:

Finally, Lech Kaczynski.

One of his main policy themes as President was the idea that modern Europe and the EU had evolved without Poland playing its rightful part in defining modern European consciousness - thanks to Yalta, Poland had been locked up and held back. So Europe just had to adjust itself to the new reality that Poland was rejoining the European mainstream - and determined to assert its rights. He made these points on various occasions with wit but determination to EU Ambassadors.

I accompanied the President to London and Scotland on an official visit to the UK, and saw him in action publicly and privately. He made a strong impression with his grasp of detail and phenomenal memory. His speech in London covered a large number of policy points about Poland and Europe, and included all sorts of sub-paragraphs and sub-sub-paragraphs as he picked his way through numerous subtle arguments - all with scarcely a note.

During that 2006 visit the UK media picked up on the 'feckless Poles' slip by his Polish interpreter; the President crossly blamed the British press for not translating his words accurately.

My wife and I returned to Warsaw from Scotland with the President and Mrs Kaczynska on the President's plane - presumably the one which crashed at Smolensk.

 

Michael Dembinski counts the days:

From Poland regaining independence at the end of World War I to the Poland's invasion by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union - 7,615 days ...

From Poland regaining democracy to the Smolensk air crash - 7,615 days.