30/03/2025
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03/27/no-wonder-our-youth-flocking-to-poland-escape-britain/
Are Britain and Poland about to reverse roles? A generation ago the UK was a magnet for hard-working young Poles escaping the painful transition from communism to a market economy.
All that is history. With the UK stricken by economic decline and social decay, Poland could become the go-to destination for British youth.
Today the Polish economy is the most dynamic in Europe. Its GDP this year is projected to rise 3.7 per cent – a growth rate Rachel Reeves would kill for. And although the Polish community in the UK is still large, many thousands have returned in the past decade.
Sadly, Britain is no longer affordable for young parents. Two years ago our son and Polish daughter-in-law moved from London to Wrocław, where they are able to send their three children to superb nursery schools at a fraction of the cost in London. Here, they might not have felt able to have a third child.
What strikes us as grandparents is how much the classes at these schools remind us of the England in which we grew up. Little boys are taught to be courteous and girls are allowed to be feminine. In these kindergartens, Joyce Grenfell would have felt very much at home.
Because chivalry and patriotism are not frowned on at school, the fighting spirit of the Poles is alive and well. Indeed, Poland now leads the European members of Nato in military terms, with defence expenditure rising to 5 per cent of GDP. Poland has twice as many soldiers as the British Army (216,000 vs 108,000).
Illegal migration is a problem for both countries, but the response has been much more robust in Poland. There, Tusk has closed the border with Belarus to stop asylum seekers from the Middle East being trafficked into Poland by Putin’s ally Alexander Lukashenko. Those who are caught are immediately sent back.
Meanwhile, British courts continue to stop even foreign criminals from being deported. Unlike central London, weekends in Warsaw are not dominated by terrifying Gaza protests.
Yet the Poles have taken in more refugees from Ukraine than any other nation. Since 2022, up to four million Ukrainians have been living in Poland. By comparison, the UK has accepted around a quarter of a million.
Margaret Thatcher’s Britain led Europe in creating an enterprise culture – for which she was revered by the Poles, then still living under martial law. But while Poland elected a pro-market centre-Right government under Tusk in 2023, we in Britain have just saddled ourselves with Labour, which is taxing and spending us back into the dark age of the 1970s.
London is decrepit and infested with pro-Gaza mobs. Warsaw, Wrocław and Gdansk offer opportunities that our cities do not
