Category Archives: Politics

The Ghosts of Smolensk

08 Friday Apr 2016

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For Law and Justice, Kaczynski is a national saint whose assassination proves his greatness, and whose greatness proves he was assassinated. Rather than having “died” like a civilian in an accident, he is referred to as having “fallen”, like a soldier in battle.

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My latest article, for Foreign Policy’s Democracy Lab, addresses the legacy of President Lech Kaczynski, who died in the Smolensk catastrophe six years ago.  The 10th of April marks the sixth anniversary of the disaster, and the first anniversary of the crash since Law and Justice returned to power last year.

You can read the article here.

Long Read essay for The Guardian available in Polish

20 Saturday Feb 2016

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The exploitation of a symbol of national suffering in support of a political agenda that seeks to turn Pole against Pole is contradictory to every conceivable notion of patriotism.

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My Long Read essay for the Guardian ‘The conspiracy theorists who have taken over Poland‘, has been published in Polish this weekend in print and online by the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, with an extra introduction for Polish readers.

The Polish version of the essay can be found here, and the introduction (in English) is as follows:

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Independence Day: Poland’s Internal Partitions

11 Wednesday Nov 2015

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The hooligans paused respectfully for the hourly trumpet call from the towers of St Mary’s Basilica marking the defence of the city from Mongol invasion in 1241, as if it somehow proved their point.

Kraków’s Main Square was crowded as I entered from the northwest at about eight o’clock in the evening.  It is 11th November – Independence Day.  On this day in 1918, Józef Piłsudski proclaimed an independent Polish state after over a century of partition by the Prussian, Russian and Austrian empires.  In 1794, Kraków witnessed the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s last symbolic act of defiance, when Tadeusz Kościuszko stood before the people in the Main Square and assumed command of the Polish forces, swearing to regain the nation’s independence. The Kościuszko Uprising was put down by Russian and Prussian forces before the final partition of 1795.

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Is Joshua Wong Being Naïve?

05 Thursday Nov 2015

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The simplicity of Wong’s message gives Hong Kong’s activists the best chance on focusing on their tactics without eternal debates about the goal

In my post about Britain’s relations with China during the Chinese state visit last month, I mentioned the case of Joshua Wong, the teenage protestor from Hong Kong and founder of the territory’s ‘Scholarism’ movement – a protest movement of Hong Kong school students against Chinese plans to introduce a compulsory “Moral and National Education Programme”, teaching that the Chinese Communist Party is “progressive, selfless and united”, into the Hong Kong school programme.  The students succeeded in having the implementation of the programme postponed, though not scrapped.

Open Democracy’s En Liang Khong has published a very interesting interview with Wong, who is on an international speaking tour ahead of learning whether he will sentenced for five years in jail for his protesting activities.  The interview is accompanied by an analysis of the divisions within the Hong Kong protest movement, including contributions by a number of Wong’s critics.

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Labour’s Phoney Debate

05 Monday Oct 2015

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Labour MPs have made a virtue of necessity by extolling the merits of external consultation and public engagement, even as they prepare for an internal battle for the levers of power

Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters did not sweep him to victory simply because they like him. They see his triumph as the first step towards a transformation of the Labour Party, and have already identified MPs who do not belong in their Brave New World. If Corbyn does not deliver on their aspirations, he risks being abandoned in favour of a new firebrand.

There is little doubt that Corbyn would oblige if he could, but though he has taken the Leader’s Office, he has not yet taken control of the Party. Many in Labour headquarters are viscerally opposed to a man they consider to be disloyal and self-indulgent. Less than 10% of Labour MPs supported his candidacy, and a majority of his Shadow Cabinet appear to hold the view that they should serve the Party in order to save it from its Leadership, rather than serve the Leadership for the good of the Party.

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