Conservatism UK- or Polish-style?

In the UK my natural tendency has been to vote Conservative. What should be the party of small(er) government, low(er) taxes, (more) balanced budgets; devolving responsibility to the citizen rather than garnering power in the hands of the State. And individual freedom. So how do I vote in Poland - where the two largest political groupings are ostensibly both 'centre right'?

My impeccable Tory credentials. Election night, May 1987.

The answer is simple - I vote Platforma Obywatelska. PO has shortcomings, of which the most obvious is its inertia when it comes to reforming an inefficient state, but among Poland's political parties, to me it's quite clearly the least bad, and by a long shot. It might not quite 'walk the walk', but it's on message and understands the imperatives of getting Poland's economy right.

So when I read in yesterday's Observer and Sunday Telegraph - about the hoo-hah caused by the British Conservatives being in league with Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, I was deeply puzzled. What on earth have David Cameron's Tories got in common with Jarosław Kaczyński's party? Not a whole lot.

PiS - lazily labelled 'right wing' by British commentators - is a not party I'd naturally associate with Norman Tebbit's 'get on your bike' self-reliance, nor with Michael Heseltine's deregulation nor with Margaret Thatcher's reformist zeal and focus on economic competitiveness. PiS panders to older Poles, nostalgic for the certainties of a time when the state provided everything, yet who were against the communist party, and who were and still are staunchly Catholic and patriotic. [I recommend examining the parallels between General Franco's supporters and those of PiS]

I won't go as far as saying that PiS are national socialists - they are nowhere near that far along the spectrum of human intolerance - but patriotic, religious socialists - certainly. They have a deep mistrust of the private sector. While Kaczyński (J) was in power (his twin's power extends only to blocking legislation, not initiating it), privatisation ground to a halt, infrastructure projects failed to move ahead - roads, railways, bridges, sewage treatment works, power grids, power stations, were not being built because there was always the suspicion that someone would actually profit from it.

Demographically, PiS's voters are generally middle-aged and old. The party makes far less headway than PO or left-of-centre SLD among younger votes.

From the economic perspective, PiS was way to the left of Tony Blair. But from the social point of view, PiS is way to the right of Cameron's Tories - on issues such as religious tolerance, gay rights, abortion, in vitro etc. In both these fields, you'd be hard-pressed to find major policy differences between the Tories and PO.

So why have Britain's Conservatives aligned themselves with PiS?

One word - Europe. Michał Kamiński

The one bit of ideology that PiS shares with the Tories - going back to Margaret Thatcher's days - is Euroscepticism. PO is unashamedly Euroenthusiastic. Yet drill down into the roots of the Euroscepticism and you see two different sets of causes. The Tories of Middle England dislike Brussels bureaucracy, daft regulations, metric measures, Britain being ruled by foreigners with funny names. Prawo i Sprawiedliwość supporters fear Germans buying up Poland, loss of fought-over sovereignty and having secularism, diversity and gayness foisted upon the nation.

David Cameron needs to mull over his party's alliances in Brussels. Britain has always been rather weedy in Europe, tiptoeing around the issues central to the EU's strategic direction allowing the French and others to determine it instead, to the advantage of other global players. British Tories should fight in Brussels for a strong and globally competitive Europe and pick partners with the same vision.