Warsaw worries

Poland and Poles are not used to attracting the sort of attention they are getting at the moment, for a mixture of reasons. Two years since the country finally joined the European Union the conservative and nationalist drift of its domestic politics is causing alarm at home and abroad. Until recently most Britons remembered Poland as a plucky wartime ally that disappeared behind the iron curtain and produced a memorable pope. Now it is the source of the largest influx of foreigners to arrive in the UK in modern times, several hundred thousands since 2004. As many Londoners already know, and as we report in G2 today, Poles have become indispensable to whole sections of the British economy. The freedom, mobility and mutual benefit that represents is a tribute to the EU expansion of which successive governments have been enthusiastic advocates. Unlike the French, we mostly welcome and value our Polish plumbers, builders and nannies.

Poles working here and elsewhere in Europe are fleeing unemployment of over 16% (the EU's worst), though that is shrinking as the remittances they send back helps create wealth. Opportunity knocking in richer EU countries and the triumph of English as the language of globalisation (overtaking the German, Russian and French that Poles once spoke) are both factors. Ironically this has brought worries about a skills shortage at home which is being filled by poorer Ukrainians and Belarussians.

The nervousness arises from the shortcomings of the centre-right Law and Justice party and this week's replacement of the popular prime minister, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, twin brother of the president, Lech Kaczynski - raising concerns about constitutional checks and balances as well as too many punning headlines and bad jokes.

The new premier's most striking traits are assertiveness towards the EU and strong hostility to gay rights and abortion, a focus for the rightwing League of Polish Families, one of two small coalition partners. Relations with Germany, historically sensitive, have deteriorated sharply in spats over a Russo-German gas pipeline and the president's overreaction to a hostile article in a Berlin newspaper, suggesting an illiberal attitude towards press freedoms. Pledges to curb corruption and speed public sector reforms are welcome but hard to achieve without singling out former communists. Like every people, Poles, (twins or otherwise) are distinctive and idiosyncratic: one of their top exports is Catholic priests, making up for the shortfall in less devout lands.