Poland’s Populists Are Suddenly Vulnerable

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 overdisparaging 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.