Profile of the Economist's correspondent in Brussels
Edward “Murky” Lucas writes a column called the Wilder European Shores for the European Voice. Wild is apt, since Lucas is a cold war warrior with a zeal that has certainly gone out of fashion. The balding Lucas, who is apt to meet old friends wearing his cycle helmet so as not to show how far the follicular decay has gone, spent the 1990s as a correspondent in Estonia. You will know this because he mentions Estonia in every article he writes.
He was hostile to the Russians in a manner that was frankly racist. He then split from his wife, who was by all accounts a psychopath, and married the attractive half Italian Observer columnist Cristina Odone, who vied – no longer, one hopes - with David Blunkett ex-beau Kimberley Quinn as a temptress of powerful men in media London.
He has now been appointed east European correspondent for the Economist, whose writing guidelines Lucas one summarised as: “This is the Economist approach. You just simplify and exaggerate.”
When not penning his column for Dana Spinant’s rag, the 44-year-old philosophy don’s son now covers eastern Europe from London – not exactly a boots-in-the-mud approach, which makes one wonder how he would treat the latest developments in the region. Viz, the fact that the Soviet Union has collapsed.
Given that he has been flogging the dead horse of hostility to communism for 15 years, would he adapt to the new situation? That the greatest threat to Polish freedom these days comes from its new leadership – demagogic, nationalist, illiberal, surrounded by anti-semites, run by two ludicrous-looking twins – who present the most inviting target in this part of the world since a Polish cavalry charge circa 1939. Lucas, a Christian, and the Kaczynski twins, Lech and Jaroslaw, 57, worship at the same altar of anti-communism.
Conclusion: he doesn’t exonerate them completely, but is kinder to them than the rest of western media.
In a recent Economist survey of Poland he begins promisingly sceptically, that Polpand is run by some remarkably “odd” and “eccentric” politicians whose party, Law and Justice has some decidedly “rum” notions.
Politics is run by a black box with the twins inside the black box and most of the cabinet outside adding that “the new government's handling of foreign affairs has looked inept; “ adding that the twins hold “ardently pro-American views, matched by loathing of both Russia and Germany.”
He goes on to give a couple of amusing account against the Kaczynskis, of how Jaroslaw Kaczynski (the PM guy, the one who lives with his mum), in the 1990s, gave a lengthy lecture to Helmut Kohl, then chancellor of Germany, who orders him out of the his office and Bonn and tells and aide “do not let this man out of gunshot of this building”. How Lech Kaczynski (the president guy) gave an interview to one of France’s best known journalists, Vincent Hervouët, at the Polish embassy in Paris. Kaczyniski kept his interviewer waiting for hours, and when he did arrive, and the journalist failed to rise from his seat, he answered his questions while staring at his shoes. When Hervouet criticised an assistant who wanted to hurry the interview along,. Kaczynski told his distinguished guest to leave what he described as Polish territory.
But the rest of the survey is more generous.
“Raw honesty is a refreshing change in Polish politics; and it is arguable that neither Jaroslaw Kaczynski nor his government deserve the ridicule heaped on them. For a start, Poland is a strongly Roman Catholic country, where polls show clear support for socially conservative values. Regarding homosexuality, abortion and euthanasia as sinful may strike liberal-minded city-dwellers (and many foreigners) as wrong-headed. But it is not scandalous in itself that conservative Catholic politicians should represent their voters' values. Despite its dire image abroad, the government is well liked at home.”
“The double act of Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Mr Marcinkiewicz arguably works quite well: one stirs things up and plays politics, the other calms them down so that the business of government can go on.” ( Marckiewicz is the former PM. Until he “resigned”. This was written in May)
He goes on to praise the “tough anti-corruption measures and a purge of the public sector”as “Poland has been shackled by the influence-peddling of the old elite”.
“The justice and interior ministries have been notably successful of late in putting more police on the streets and bringing more criminals to justice.
Meanwhile “the defence minister has closed down the lawless military intelligence services”. (Defence minister Radek Sikorski is an old friend) He concludes respectfully, judging Jaroslaw (the one with the mole) as “the bossier and more intelligent one”.
So he thinks the fact that they are in tune with their electorate justifies their conservative populism; and that they have done some good stuff.
What about the economy? The survey is entitled – revealingly - “Cheer up”
Polish economic growth is half that of the EU new member average; so is foreign investment; wealth per capita is the lowest in Europe after Latvia. It is worrying, but Lucas doesn’t rub it in, and chooses to focus on the positive aspects of Poland’s economy, its high growth rate and low inflation. It is definitely the act of the giving the benefit of the doubt.
Once you have made your mind up, you have to stick to it – even if some leading politicians in Poland compare the Kacznyskis to the oppressive president Lukashenko in neighbouring Belarus, one of Lucas’s and the EU’s favourite pariah countries. (Lucas’s number one hate object is Russia’s Vladimir Putin.)
One correspondent wrote to Lucas’s blog, which contains all his Economist articles, pointing out that one member of staff of the Polish foreign ministry, Pawel Dobrowolski, was sacked because his department - not him personally – had not had the sycophantic foresight to halt the standard procedure of translating articles in the foreign press into Polish on the foreign ministry website when the infamous potato-head scandal blew up. To recap: in their usual illiberal mamner, the Kaczynski brothers asked the German government a month ago to apologise when Taz, a small but well-known radical German newspaper, said the brothers resembled potatoes; they do resemble potatoes. The German refused, saying the Polish leaders did not understand press freedom. Lech told Wprost that it was "an insult to a head of state is a crime and there must be consequences." …. The devil cannot bear scorn
The correspondent pointed out that this boded ill, an indication that the purges of public servants with a connection to communism which Lucas had praised earlier could be a pretext to rule the Polish public sector by fear and arbitariness, and fire anyone who wasn’t a sycophant. And that the best way to tackle corruption was deregulation, not the set up of yet another agency with the power to “tap phones and arrest” people. Indeed, one might add, Polish history is too full of them.
The blogger also questioned Lucas’s boilerplate, pro Kaczynski remark that Stanislaw Kuza, the new finance minister, was “well-respected”. Kuza, a malleable 34, is the Kaczynskis’ third finance minister in less than a month. And according to Reuters, he, too, might be just keeping the chair warm for someone else.
Lucas, stumbling, muttered something about Kluza’s “CV showing he is a respected practitioner – I didn’t say respected academic.” And admitted that he had “second thoughts” about the blunt instrument of purges. He recovered his poise though and wrote: “On the one hand, there are a lot of sleazy and incompetent people in the public service who should have been sacked a long time ago to make way for younger and better ones.”
Really? Tell us more. But he doesn’t.
One of the things about reading Lucas’s blog is that you get a bucketful of him all at once. And you realise: apart from one or two well thought out, nicely written pieces where he lengthens his stride (and are not republished, tant pis, the magazine), it is all opinion and judgement; no exposition. He loves qualifying adjectives, value judgements, as a substitute for analysis (exaggerate and simplify, remember?), and sometimes he writes in a kind of Ladybird prepschool language, as if reading a story to his young sons. “Rum”. “Silly” – and his favourite - “murky”.
.I have a suspicion: it is partly the corrupting nature of the job. As a correspondent for the Economist, he has become so full of himself he has ceased to be a reporter, carefully chronicling, analysing, thinking about the world – and then describing it to the reader
He travels around Europe, a place that is full of stupid, starstruck Economist-reading technocrats, and is displeased when his interview requests are not immediately granted. Prime ministers are queuing up to talk to me, he complains after the Hungarian one messes his schedules around.. After talking to respected “local analysts” or “commentators” – ie local journalists - he goes away and pronounces a new development “murky” or “dodgy and unattractive”, as he wrote recently about the new Slovak government .
Although if it behaves, a government can be “clean and efficient”.
Reading the archives, you sense he is living out the narrative whose parameters were set out when he was a young ma in the late eighties: setting nations free, travelling to historically preserved but little known east European cities, dodging – or drinking – with “spooks and goons”, more drinking with dissident friends, some of whom are now in power; above all, fighting the big evil.
But today, with a foot in Brussels, a base in London, a responsibility to write about half the continent, there is no sense reading him that we live in 2006,, nothing on Islam in Europe, global warming, the constitution. No understanding about the complex machinery of Brussels, without which understanding of east European political dynamic is incomplete. No self insight into the fact that half his comments about communist bureaucracy could probably apply to the EU. (well…he writes for the European Voice.). As a Christian in his twenties, he long ago in eastern Euirope found his garden of good and evil. Though his articles contain enough ambiguities and sees both sides of the argument to satisfy both sides, he has a basic attitude of forgiveness towards the Kaczynskis, for, in his eyes, they are anti communists, and on the side of good. Except the Kaczyniskis are venomously unpleasant.
