Polish election boosts Cameron’s reform plan

A EUROSCEPTIC party has swept into power in Poland boosting David Cameron’s hopes of reforming Britain’s relationship with the EU.

Beata Szydlo will become prime minister after voters turned decisively to the right and handed victory to the Law and Justice Party. Her administration is set to be Poland’s first majority government since the fall of communism in 1989. Exit polls last night put her on course to win 232 of 460 parliamentary seats.

Law and Justice Party members already sit with the Tories in the EU parliament and support curbs on migration, more rights for national parliaments and stronger protection for countries which are not in the euro.

Miss Szydlo, a 52-year-old miner’s daughter and former mayor, is seen as a fresh face in Polish politics and her tax-breaks policy has appealed to the country’s poorer, rural areas.

Law and Justice ran a strongly anti-immigration election campaign that saw its controversial leader Jaroslav Kaczynski, who will not hold a position but is likely to wield influence behind the scenes, describe migrants from the Middle East as disease ridden. He accused them of bringing cholera and dysentery to Europe.

The new government is expected to reverse its predecessor’s decision to let in up to 7,000 migrants in a Europe-wide response to the crisis. Pavel Swidlicki of Open Europe, a think tank which calls for reform of the EU, said the election would cause headaches in Berlin and Brussels but was good news for Mr Cameron.

He added: ‘The victory and the wider result strengthen his narrative about an EU that has overreached itself and which needs reforms to become more accountable to its citizens and less dismissive of their concerns. More specifically, the two parties share a desire to see national sovereignty reasserted as opposed to ever deeper political integration.

‘Law and Justice could therefore be a strong ally for Cameron in his bid to achieve a more flexible EU in which not every member state has to pursue the objective of ever closer union.’

However, the two parties will clash over a Tory desire to restrict migrants’ access to benefits in the UK, which is seen as deeply unfair in Poland.

Voters rejected the centrist Civic Platform party, which has been in power for eight years under prime minister Eva Kopacz and sought closer ties with the EU.

It won just 23 per cent of the vote and will take around 133 seats. Law and Justice secured 38 per cent, according to the latest Ipsos poll last night. Miss Szydlo is seen as lacking in charisma but did well in a TV debate.

‘Could be a strong ally’