Poland's Populists Are Suddenly Vulnerable

The opposition rallies after Law and Justice fails to build on its stunning 2015 victory

If politics is all about keeping control of the narrative, Poland’s nationalists just got a glimpse of what can happen when you lose it. The seemingly impregnable political machine that’s stamped its authority on the country over the past three years and defiantly faced down castigation from the European Union has shown it has vulnerabilities.

A painful few weeks saw the prime minister embroiled in a scandal over disparaging comments he made during his past life as a banker and the strongest rebuke yet from the EU over Poland’s overhaul of the courts. They culminated in a lukewarm endorsement from voters for the governing Law and Justice party as it failed to gain all but one of the big cities in local elections. In Warsaw, the main outpost of the opposition, Law and Justice was trounced.

Poland, backed by Hungary and other nationalist allies, has led the line in what’s become Europe’s biggest stand-off between East and West since the Berlin Wall fell almost three decades ago. Whether it’s a temporary setback or a sea change remains to be seen, but alarm bells have gone off for the leaders of “Poland First” patriotism that turned the country into a prototype for Donald Trump. At party headquarters in Warsaw the day of the vote, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the Law and Justice leader and Poland’s populist-in-chief, said the campaign for re-election to government next year has started and “we will have to work, work, and work again.”