Quote Originally Posted by Furunculus View Post
on the subject of ECR from Daniel Hannan:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/da...polish-leader/
Ah, Hannan. Always at the forefront of things.

Erm...the new president of the entire European Parliament is Polish. Which makes the chest-thumping about electing a Pole a bit moot.

More importantly...Hannan's man is a sidekick of the nutcase Kaczinski twins. So this should provide for years of entertainment to come: the Brits being led now by some extremist Pole.


Meanwhile, the European Parliament, unlike the British conservatives, is headed by a democratic Pole instead of a (former?) fascist anti-Semitic one.

Jerzy Buzek is in the centre-right European People's Party (EPP)

The first session of the new European Parliament in Strasbourg has been dominated by two issues: the election of Jerzy Buzek as its president and the arrival of the first far right MEPs from the UK.

Jerzy Buzek is the living embodiment of what many people think the European Union is all about.
He was born in Poland, in a border region which changed hands between Czechoslovakia, Poland and Germany in the chaos of World War II.

He ended the war living and working in communist Poland - a regime that he eventually helped to bring down as a member of the anti-bureaucratic trade union Solidarity. Eventually, he became prime minister of Poland and now, aged 69, has been sworn in as the first president of the European Parliament from the former communist East.
It has been a remarkable journey for him and for Europe, the significance of which can perhaps best be judged by a line from Mr Buzek's speech of thanks.

"Once upon a time I hoped to be a member of the Polish Parliament, in a free Poland," he said.
"Today I have become the president of the European Parliament, something I could never have