Polish government’s security gamble over border migrant crisis fails to pay off in polls

Poland has recently become Europe’s frontline in standing up to Belarus, with the US, the EU and the UK rallying behind it. For the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) leaders, this is the best international approval they could ever achieve.

The party’s leaders have been one of Europe’s political vagabonds since they came to power in 2015 as their right-wing views of migrants unsettled Brussels, but the recent crisis on its Belarus border provided an opportunity to change that.

PiS has long relied on portraying migrants as a threat to rally its conservative voters, a trend that continued up to the recent gridlock triggered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s plan to herd thousands of refugees to pressure the EU.