Poland’s right follows Trump’s rust-belt formula

FOR single mother Katarzyna Staszewska, the change of government in Poland four years ago meant her family got to visit the seaside for the first time.

Welfare payments introduced by the Law & Justice party allowed her to take her four children on holiday to the Baltic coast, six hours away by car from their home in the city of Katowice in Silesia.

She also bought them bicycles, signed them up for karate and dancing clubs and replaced the family clunker with a “more reliable” 15-year-old Opel.

Now Staszewska is planning to help Law & Justice win a second term in today’s general election.

Prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki has said the vote is Poland’s most important since breaking with communism, because it will determine whether the sweeping overhauls of the past four years take hold. Polls show the conservative rightwin party is on course for victory again.

From outside, the election looks like another culture clash between those allied to the European mainstream and the nationalist forces that have transformed Poland into a rogue from one of the continent’s most reliable partners.

The government has boosted control over the economy, media and courts, and increased the influence of the Catholic church, while the EU has repeatedly sued it for flouting the rule of law.

But in Silesia, with pockets of poorer areas struggling with pollution, depopulation and the slow demise of mining, it is viewed through a different lens. In Poland’s faded industrial heartland, it is all about making ends meet, and like in the rust-belt states of the US voting for Donald Trump or the former manufacturing regions of Brexit Britain, voters like Staszewska provide key support for a divisive political project.

“Worse-off people were invisible for almost three decades but thanks to Law & Justice, it’s no longer so,” said Staszewska, 39, an assistant at a school for children with disabilities. “There’s a link between someone who can afford a bike and that young person’s dignity.”

Law & Justice, under the guidance of founder and leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has piled resources into winning Silesia, which traditionally voted with the pro-EU opposition.

A good showing in Silesia, which is allotted 55 of the 460 seats in Poland’s powerful lower house of parliament, will strengthen Law & Justice’s possible repeat majority. Evidence shows policies are working, with a reduction in poverty, especially among children. The government has pumped 126bn zloty (€29bn) of new benefits directly into Polish wallets since 2016, equivalent to more than 5pc of gross domestic product.

To win a second term, it has pledged to build a ‘Polish welfare state’ and nearly double the minimum wage over four years.