JUVENILE, SPITEFUL – AND MORE PROOF WE MUST LEAVE
EVen by Donald Tusk’s standards, the passage in his speech yesterday about the ‘special place in Hell’ reserved for Brexiteers was deliberately unpleasant and provocative.
leo Varadkar, the Irish Taoiseach, was overheard joking about the outrage it would cause in Britain. Mr Tusk, the former Polish prime minister, nodded, laughed, and then to drive home the point, tweeted the inflammatory remarks.
The episode infuriated the Brexiteer Tory MPs who Theresa May is desperately trying to keep on side as her negotiations with Brussels enter a critical phase. ‘You wonder if that’s why Tusk does it,’ said one senior exasperated government source.
Mr Tusk certainly seems to relish winding up Britain’s Brexit negotiators.
When Mrs May went to Salzburg to sell her Brexit plan last year, Donald Tusk released an Instagram picture offering her some cake. ‘Sorry, no cherries,’ was his punchline – a childish attempt to suggest that her so-called Chequers plan was not going to be allowed to cherry-pick concessions from Brussels.
If he’d done his homework, he would have known the Prime Minister avoids cake on account of her Type 1 diabetes.
And when Mrs May’s Government suffered a crushing 230-vote Commons defeat last month, Mr Tusk responded by sending a gloating tweet. ‘If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no Deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?’ Charming.
Mr Tusk is president of the european Council, which is responsible for the meetings of all EU leaders – making him one of the five unelected presidents of the EU.
He has a history of launching spiteful attacks on Britain since the EU referendum, which he describes, with typical over-exaggeration, as: ‘one of the saddest moments in 21st-century european history.’
AT A legal conference in Dublin last year, making clear his scorn for Britain’s democratic will, he added: ‘I don’t like Brexit. In fact, sometimes I am furious about it.’
In fact, Mr Tusk is angry about Brexit all of the time, complaining to anyone who’ll listen that it takes up nearly all of his time. He has been an implacable opponent of the British negotiating team at every turn in the Brexit negotiations.
Yet his native Poland, under the Right-wing law and Justice government, is one of the most vocal EU countries calling for Brussels to compromise with Theresa May. Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki said only days ago: ‘We still believe a compromise is possible.’
Mr Tusk made his position crystal clear in the first statement from an EU leader when the referendum result came through. Warning of an end to ‘ Western civilisation’, he added: ‘I always remember what my father used to tell me: “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”.’
He was also hugely critical of David Cameron for calling the poll in the first place. In a BBC documentary last month, he revealed he had been scornful of Mr Cameron’s hopes of securing a renegotiation of Britain’s deal with the EU.
‘I told him bluntly: “Come on, David, get real. I know that all prime ministers are promising to help you, but believe me, the truth is that no one has an appetite for revolution in europe only because of your stupid referendum”.’ Yet Mr Tusk was backed for his top job at the european Council by Mr Cameron himself back in 2014, the same year he pledged the referendum.
In backing Mr Tusk, he was trying to curry favour with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Mr Tusk and Mrs Merkel are strong allies, having both been brought up under Communist rule – Mrs Merkel in east Germany and Mr Tusk in Gdansk, a northern Polish city. He speaks better German than english, and once famously said: ‘I’m incapable of getting angry with Angela Merkel.’
His father was a carpenter, his mother a nurse, and a grandfather spent time in a labour camp, served briefly in the German army, then fought for the Polish Resistance.
Mr Tusk, 61, married with two adult children, is a liberal Roman Catholic who likes popular culture: Quentin Tarantino films, lord of the Rings and football. But he is deeply serious. His wife, Malgorzata, said: ‘Politics was always my husband’s passion, and it’s impossible to compete with passion.’
After studying history at Gdansk University, he was involved in student associations supporting the pro- democratic Solidarity trade union led by lech Walesa. He once said: ‘Communism was something so hideous that you had to be an exceptional conformist or a fool not to see the evil around you.’ But he was never a standout figure in the pro-democracy movement.
After communism collapsed in Poland in 1989, Mr Tusk co-founded the liberal Democratic Congress, a party of staunch economic liberals, before setting up the Civil Platform Party which propelled him to the premiership in 2007, resigning seven years later to move to the wellremunerated offices of the EU.
Initially reluctant to leave national politics, Mr Tusk was persuaded by his wife for the ‘prestige, better money and less problems at work’ that come with a top job in Brussels on the infamous gravy trains of pay and perks. As prime minister, he earned £47,500 a year, making him one of the lowest-paid EU leaders.
BUT now, as president of the european Council, he earns £263,000, and has a personal motorcade of five limousines. nice work if you can get it.
As for the future, he is hoping, when his term of office ends this year, to return to Poland in triumph to run for the presidency.
For all his withering remarks, his incendiary and juvenile commentaries of the Brexit negotiations have often acted as a gift to Brexiteers. As Tory MP Justin Tomlinson said last night: ‘Tusk has just sent support for Brexit through the roof.’
Mr Tusk reminds voters that the EU is an undemocratic institution run by overpaid, unelected officials often in the twilight of their careers. He is the very embodiment of EU bureaucracy: accountable to no one – least of all the member states he claims to represent.