Get ready, Keir Starmer. Five years to stop us growing poorer than Poland
Tax, human rights, corruption and more must be ruthlessly reformed to steer Britain out of the doldrums
OK, not hugely certain about the economic prediction but let’s run with it. It’s popular at present.
Hmm:#
Law and Justice (Polish: Prawo i Sprawiedliwość [ˈpravɔ i ˌspravjɛˈdlivɔɕt͡ɕ] ⓘ, PiS) is a right-wing populist and national-conservative political party in Poland. Its chairman is Jarosław Kaczyński.
It was founded in 2001 by Jarosław and Lech Kaczyński as a direct successor of the Centre Agreement after it split from the Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS). It won the 2005 parliamentary and presidential elections, after which Lech became the president of Poland. It headed a parliamentary coalition with the League of Polish Families and Self-Defence of the Republic of Poland between 2005 and the 2007 election. It placed second and they remained in the parliamentary opposition until 2015. It regained the presidency in the 2015 election, and later won a majority of seats in the parliamentary election. They retained the positions following the 2019 and 2020 election, but lost their majority following the 2023 Polish parliamentary election.
So Poland’s had an awful lot of ruling by right wing populists, even social conservatives, recently.
Interesting, no? Rule by right wing populists, social conservatives, produces stand out economic growth. Who knew?
Yeah. But Poles. They don’t have the overwhelming sense of entitlement shared by so many Brits. So different outcomes from the same inputs?
Someone who comments here, bitches about his long term unemployment. Incomprehensible to most Poles. Their attitude would be to acquire a skill they’d get paid what they need to practise. Not keep plugging something isn’t wanted.
Yes, I’m sure Keir Starmer and the rest of the Moopets will get right on that.
It’s not just Brits. Spanish are the same. Went to the fair with my Brasilian. She was looking at the rides, most of them operating virtually empty. She couldn’t understand the pricing. 4€ a go. So for a couple with two kids 16€ for 5 minutes. How many rides could they afford to have? How many couldn’t afford a ride at all. Surely, she said, if they reduced the prices more people would use them. The cost of running the ride wouldn’t be more. In the end, they’d make more money. So the street girl out of the favela, left inadequate schooling at 14, discovers optimal pricing. Or maybe that’s why she discovers it?
Poland: no immigration; no Net Zero. Might that be significant in its success?
@BiS. And that’s actually important.
Left winger – that’s because of rent seeking landlords and capitalists take all the people’s money so tax the rich!
Right winger – that’s because people don’t get to keep enough of their own money so stop taxing [the rich]
In a way they are both correct. The U.K. is on a downward spiral as economic activity is slowing as it’s too expensive and difficult to undertake economic activity which spreads increasing (regulatory, tax and compliance) overheads yet more thinly so prices go up even more.
Repeat until we are all unemployed.
Yeah AA. But this is what people are voting for.
“Repeat until we are all unemployed.”
And own nothing and be happy? Lob robots and a low level UBI into the mix, and some would argue….
Noneed to look at Johnny Foreigner – compare the performance of the 1951-64 Conservative government or Mrs Thatcher’s decade with *any* Labour government.
Footnote: the 1997-2010 Labour government real GDP growth was overstated by “up to 1% pa” due to an error introduced to the calculation of the RPI a few months after Gordon Brown was appointed chancellor and only corrected a few months after he resigned as PM (Source: “Significance”, the Journal of the Royal statistical society) so reported data understates thedifference between centre-right and left-wing economic policies but even the phoney data cannot completely hide it.
‘The U.K. is on a downward spiral as economic activity is slowing as it’s too expensive and difficult to undertake economic activity which spreads increasing (regulatory, tax and compliance) overheads yet more thinly so prices go up even more.’
It’s not only the UK Andrew. Of course we’re also importing so many people that we don’t have enough houses for them too.
Here in Islington Nad Vistula there was much rejoicing when the [insert pejorative] PiS regime was ousted last autumn, although President Duda is still in office.
For now, Tusk (formerly our man in Brussels) has resisted EU calls to open borders, partly because of the “look at how many Ukies we’re already accommodating”, and partly because, well, open borders with Belarus and Kaliningrad aren’t a good look right now.
PiS still have the most seats and the presidential veto, and would probably have won outright had their abortion stance been a tad more lenient – unfortunately, the church holds a great deal of sway in politics (and many staunch catholics are deeply unimpressed by the current shower in the Vatican) – but any political faction here has to cleave more or less to a centrist, church-friendly stance.
There was a Telegraph piece about this as well, which pointed out that although GDP per capita here is well behind Britain’s, due to the considerably lower cost of living, purchasing power is already much greater. And, as others have noted, the work ethic is strong, although national insurance is very high, and thus a dampener on wages. I suspect the big growth has already happened as Poland comes more into line with the richer EU economies.
In $, national income per head in Poland is still only $23,000 (£18,000), or less than half that of the UK. It would take economic growth of well in excess of 3pc pa for 5 + years for Poland to catch up with Britain.
Taking purchasing power parity as the measure, Poland is already richer than the UK – $49,000 per capita against $47,000. That gap is forecast by the IMF to widen further over the next five years to $63,500 against the UK’s $50,000.
Using US dollars as the measure, the Italian economy is today 34pc smaller than its UK counterpart. The comparison looks slightly better in per capita terms, but at around 20pc below Britain, not much.
Source: Jeremy Warner, Daily Telegraph
Bloke in Spain,
“So the street girl out of the favela, left inadequate schooling at 14, discovers optimal pricing. Or maybe that’s why she discovers it?”
I believe that most people’s development is being arrested by being at school past the age of 14. I don’t consider my last few school years to have done anything for me and I would argue that wasting my time there got in the way of doing more interesting things.
Going to work would have put her 7 years ahead of the people who stayed within the educational bubble in this country.
@John B – “Poland: no immigration”
Only if you count a million or more Ukrainians as zero.
Maybe having hassle free trade with 300 million plus neighbours helps too?
Whoever wins the next UK general election is going to have to address the trade problems we are experiencing. Too much paperwork, too many hurdles, too many delays. It’s only worth the effort now if you’re a decent sized player, importing for farmers markets and like just isn’t feasible.
Your regular neoliberal reality-based reminder that Poland’s biggest trading partner is not with the rest of the EU. Likewise the UK for which the EU was at best about 1/6th the size of its biggest trading partner.
Lying Rory Stewart once seriously misunderstood trade when claiming 97% of UK lamb production was traded with the EU. ( Based on UK – 66, EU – 33, not-EU -1) Who are we going to trade with if we leave? he said.
For the vast majority of countries, your biggest trading partner is yourself. Get that right first before bleating about international.
Poland has Germany on one side and Russia on the other.
Bitch of one, bitch of the other or battleground.
Not a position I’d ever envy!
Whatever relations Poland has with it’s neighbours, “hassle free” are not words that spring to mind.
Bill H @ 7.08, how much of the unnecessary paperwork / bureaucracy/checks are demanded by those in the UK establishment who are committed to ensuring ‘Brexit’ is as toilsome as possible because they were agin it?
Then add in our ‘friends’ in the EU also making life for us as difficult as they can pour encourager les autres………..
although GDP per capita here is well behind Britain’s, due to the considerably lower cost of living, purchasing power is already much greater
Until Poland abandons the Złoty for the €, which is no doubt on Tusks’s agenda, since he was dead keen during his last turn at PM in 2012. He was blocked by not having the necessary parliamentary majority.