It could have been that Boris Johnson had managed to insult his opposite number. It could have been that Michael Fallon had been too keen to find out a little more about the Polish defence minister’s conviction that the hoax Protocols of the Elders of Zion pamphlet alleging a Jewish conspiracy for world domination may be real.
Either way, when the two delegations trooped into the Downing Street press conference more than an hour later than planned, the Brits were thin on the ground. On the left side of the room was half the Polish government; on the right just David Davis, the Brexit minister. Lucky Poles. It wasn’t hard to get the impression that the Brits weren’t taking this UK-Polish summit quite as seriously as their counterparts.
With most EU countries not really in the mood to talk to Britain until after article 50 has been triggered – and even then only if they really must – Theresa May has found herself short of countries willing to indulge her desire to shoot the breeze about foreign policy. So when Poland indicated it was willing to have a bilateral meeting, May was only too keen to roll out the red carpet. Schmoozing a rightwing, xenophobic government might not have been the best of looks when Britain was trying to reposition itself as open and friendly to Europe, but beggars can’t be choosers. Besides, we did have some hate crime fences to mend.
“We’ve had an excellent and historic first summit,” said Theresa at her most Maybotic, frantically racking her brains for anything memorable that had been discussed. After saying she was sorry for all the attacks on Poles in the UK since the EU referendum, the conversation had rather dried up. There had been a bit of chat about how much they both hated the Russians and she’d got away with making the 150 squaddies she had already promised to send to the Polish eastern border sound like a new commitment. But that was about it. “I did also update Prime Minister Szydło on the work we are doing on Brexit,” she added as an afterthought. Best not to mention that had taken all of 30 seconds.
The Polish PM, Beata Szydło, had looked on impassively as the Maybot ran through her highlights package of the day’s events. She recalled it all rather differently. “Great Britain doesn’t have summits with countries like Poland very often,” she observed. And she was looking forward to many more in the coming months. Starting in Warsaw next year. The Maybot looked startled. Had she really agreed to that? The Polish interpreter whispered into her earpiece, assuring her that she had.
“We’ve had useful bilateral talks about the role of small- and medium-sized enterprises [SMEs] in Poland and England,” Szydło continued. “We have also discussed having a chair of Polish studies at Cambridge University and making sure that Polish was taught in primary schools.” Szydło’s delivery is entirely deadpan, so it was hard to gauge if this was her idea of a joke or whether she was deadly serious. The Maybot may feel a bit guilty about the rise in hate crimes against Poles in England, but not enough to enrage the Eurosceptics in her party by teaching Polish to the Poles.
This level of detail wasn’t what the British government or the media had come to hear, and when the Maybot reluctantly took her two questions from the British media the attention switched back to Brexit. A Sunday Times interview had quoted the prime minister as saying she was losing sleep over Brexit. Was this true? “There may have been an overinterpretation of my sleepless Brexit nights,” she said, anxious to make it look as if she wasn’t in the slightest bit panicky. “The Polish prime minister and I had some useful discussions about Brexit today.
“No we didn’t,” said Szydło.
“Yes we did,” said the Maybot, hastily rewriting history. “We talked a lot about Brexit.”
Szydło had no memory of this. Much as she might have wanted some reassurances that Poles living in the UK would be allowed to stay after Brexit, she wasn’t about to break ranks with the rest of the EU and sign up to a unilateral deal guaranteeing the rights of British people living in Poland. If May thought she could pick off the Poles as the weak link in the EU chain, she could think again.
“All we had today was bilateral talks,” Szydło insisted. And she was looking forward to much more talk about SMEs in the near future. May groaned. If she hadn’t been having sleepless nights before today, she would now.
