Rightwing populists have many countries in their grip. Come to Poland: see how they can be pushed back | Anne McElvoy

Donald Tusk is working hard and fast on a great transformation, but travel the country and it's clear what a difficult task that is

My formative journalistic years were spent reporting on the final freeze of the cold war - days of hard times and soft currencies. When I return to those countries now, I test myself on how well I guessed what would follow in the three decades since. On Poland in particular, I would have been hard pressed to predict the giddy zigzag of power still featuring a generation who marched to topple communism, but whose protagonists feud bitterly about how to govern the country in the 21st century.

We talk a lot about places that have recently bought a one-way ticket towards authoritarian politics - Russia and Turkey for the full-fat versions, and Hungary's democratic backsliding and stifling of independent institutions.