PiS won the Polish parliamentary elections receiving the largest percentage of votes ever, but will probably have slightly less seats in the Sejm than before the election. That is due to the workings of the electoral system. Jarosław Kaczyński looked disappointed and with good 
reasons. First of all, strategically the situation is now worse in several respects. Firstly, both the left and the far right now have a representation in Parilament. Kaczyński, contrary to all the demonisation new received from Polish liberals and Western media influenced by
them, is a fundamentally moderate conservative, with strongly egalitarian economic views (his admiration for Thomas Piketty is well known). However, for many years a central aspect of his political strategy was not to allow the emergence of a viable rival to the right of the
governing United Right coalition in which PiS is the predominant force. This coalition contains parties and individual members to the right of Kaczyński on many issues. With the right wing Konfederacja a much more cohesive force than the populist Kukiz 15 in the outgoing
Parilament, keeping the United Right united will be considerably harder. The Left is now also back in force and it will offer a credible competition to PiS in economic demagoguery. Although I am always trying to be cautious about economic predictions (basically because I think
that, like climate science, it’s an area in which our understanding is enormously ahead of our ability to predict) I think it’s very likely that in not very distant future there is going to be a global downturn, which could even be very severe. If that is so, very few
governments in power will escape blame. PiS has now 4 years and it’s economic program is based on the assumption of continual growth of prosperity. If there is a serious downturn, there may not be enough time for a recovery and it would not then be surprising if the beneficiary
became the left. Although some polls suggested that PiS might get large enough majority to change the a Constitution, this was always only wishful thinking (or panic). But without changing the Constitution PiS will not be able to prevent a future government of the left not only
reversing all it had accomplished but even going much further.
