Like two Spitfires tipping their wings in the sky, Britain and Poland are beginning to fly in different directions.
The Polish pilot is heading for Berlin, not to strafe it but to join it. The British pilot is steering out into the Atlantic. Their old friendship is strained. Each country's choice is influenced as much by history, politics and emotion as it is by any cool calculation of self-interest. Both flight paths carry risks that the pilots may not see clearly enough from the cockpit – and both may yet change course.
The tensions became apparent at a sometimes emotional meeting of the Polish-British Round Table in Krakow last week, very different in tone from the shared optimism of our first encounter in Poland's former royal capital six years ago. A Polish participant said "our friendship is getting harder these days" and deplored the British government's "transactional approach" to the EU. A British politician wondered why the Poles were not more grateful for everything the United Kingdom had done for them – including Tony Blair's extraordinary opening of the British labour market to what turned out to be up to a million Poles. (Polish is now the most-spoken foreign language in Britain.)
Yes, replied a Polish politician, that helped when there was high unemployment in Poland and a Polish referendum on joining the European Union. But Britain had no right to expect eternal gratitude – and not everything Britain had done in history had been so positive for Poland. (The word "Yalta" was not spoken, except by me in a whisper, but hung heavy in the Polish air.) And after all, it was a British statesman, Lord Palmerston, who said that Britain has no eternal allies, only eternal interests. Poland, too.
Read more: The flight paths of Britain and Poland diverge in a disunited Europe | Timothy Garton Ash | Comment is free | The Guardian
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