Conservative Upheaval Fuels Right-Wing Divide in Poland

This is why I disagree with Sr Díaz's thesis. Poland is on the knife-edge with a Left-wing Premier. This may tip them over into a descent into the abyss. 

From The European Conservative

By Filip Łapiński

The conflict pits an older social-paternalist national conservatism against a younger, libertarian-nationalist, anti-system Right.

As the centrist-liberal camp around Donald Tusk quietly reconsolidates power, the Polish Right is fragmenting. Law and Justice (PiS) is losing its long-standing dominance to younger, more anti-system forces, while a new ultra-radical party—the Crown—threatens to splinter the conservative camp and even hand the next election to the left-liberals.

As the first half of the parliament’s term ends, the right-wing momentum that seemed so strong just a few months ago—when the presidential elections were won, against all odds, by the formally non-partisan national conservative Karol Nawrocki—has visibly stalled. Surveys show eroding support for the smaller coalition partners, while their former voters gather around Civic Platform, led by Tusk, solidifying its first place in the polls. In his recent rhetoric, Tusk appeals to unity over ambitious reform, invoking the dangers of Russian aggression and the radicalisation of right-wing voters.

On the conservative side, however, the opposite dynamic is at work. The Right is undergoing intense intellectual turmoil: programme conferences, debates, and conventions multiply, as competition of ideas interacts with rising social anxiety and a growing awareness of tectonic shifts in geopolitics. This may generate conservative momentum in the realm of ideas but can also push right-wing parties into open conflict.

So far, Law and Justice has visibly fallen in the polls. The party, led by Chairman Jarosław Kaczyński for 24 years and for most of that time the dominant force on the Right—uniquely capable of winning single-party parliamentary majorities in both 2015 and 2019—is now repeatedly measured at below 30% support. The recent ambitious party convention and the programme activity of figures such as former prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki were meant to regain the intellectual initiative, but the polls have so far not followed, and Kaczyński’s ambition to fight once more for a single-party majority seems more distant than ever.

The decline of PiS cannot be attributed just to the burden of controversial policies or simple fatigue after eight years in power; it has already been two years since the party ceded government, and the most recent losses point to more immediate factors, mainly the emergence of serious competitors on its right flank.

This becomes clearest when we look at the gains of two rival right-wing formations: Confederation and the Crown. Confederation—originally a wide alliance of alternative figures on the Polish Right, including anti-establishment conservative liberals, nationalists, and populist monarchists—has long struggled to carve out its place in Polish politics. Despite strong popularity among younger voters, it barely entered parliament in both 2019 and 2023. Two years ago, its support rose sensationally to almost 15% just months before the elections, as it tried to reach the centre-right electorate disappointed with PiS. In the end, however, these voters mostly chose the centrist Third Way, leaving Confederation with a mediocre result and helping secure a stable majority for the liberal coalition bloc.

Since then, the scene has changed substantially. The Third Way has dissolved, leaving both of its components with dwindling support. Poland2050’s leader, Szymon Hołownia, recently improved his standing on the right by opposing Tusk’s attempts to block Nawrocki’s inauguration, but this did not revive his party’s fortunes. Centre-right voters instead drifted back to Confederation, which has stabilised between 10 and15% and become a serious competitor for PiS.

PiS and Confederation both stress national sovereignty against what they portray as hegemonic ambitions from Brussels, but Confederation eagerly highlights the concessions to the EU made by PiS during its 2015–2023 rule. The parties also diverge over the war in Ukraine. PiS adopted a very pro-Ukrainian stance from the outset, supporting Poland’s eastern neighbour militarily, diplomatically, and socially, extending welfare benefits for Ukrainian migrants and refugees, while postponing any serious reckoning with the difficult Polish-Ukrainian World War II history. Confederation has consistently criticised this as naive and one-sided, advocating a more assertive, transactional approach. Many of its leaders openly adopt anti-Ukrainian rhetoric in social policy, diplomacy, and politics of memory, tapping into the erosion of emotional solidarity with Ukraine and the growth of anti-Ukrainian sentiment in parts of Polish society.

The two parties also clashed over COVID-19 and economic policy: PiS backed lockdowns and vaccines and built a socially paternalistic, state-interventionist welfare model, while Confederation opposed restrictions and has remained firmly free-market and pro-capitalist. In essence, the conflict pits an older social-paternalist national conservatism (PiS) against a younger, libertarian-nationalist, anti-system Right (Confederation).

This creeping rivalry has recently escalated, with leaders of both parties publicly accusing each other of “political banditry” and “personal deficiencies.” Supporters on each side view this tension ambivalently: many see a PiS-Confederation coalition as the only realistic alternative to Tusk’s rule and worry about the prospects for future cooperation. At the same time, mistrust and shifting polls tempt some leaders to gamble on further conflict in the hope of fatally weakening their rival. Meanwhile, Law and Justice itself is beleaguered by infighting: Mateusz Morawiecki leads its more technocratic and intellectual wing but is attacked by more populist-leaning figures who would like PiS to move closer to the ideological profile that appeals to Confederation voters.

The most recent game-changer, however, is the Confederacy of the Polish Crown (hereafter: the Crown)—a breakaway party that left Confederation in January 2025, having previously been its most extreme faction. Led by Grzegorz Braun, a charismatic one-eyed monarchist filmmaker and activist, the Crown achieved its first significant success when Braun unexpectedly won 6% in the presidential elections. Since then, the party’s support has risen to around 9% in recent polls. Braun’s rhetoric is strongly anti-EU, anti-Ukrainian and antisemitic; his sharp slogans—“Gone with Euro-Kolkhoz” or “This is Poland, not Ukropolin”—and spectacular stunts, notably extinguishing Chanukka candles in the Polish parliament with a fire extinguisher, have attracted die-hard former PiS voters from the most conservative eastern regions.

As Braun gains momentum, his movement has grown more radical. He has embraced leaders of the pan-Slavic, National-Bolshevik fringe group “Compatriot Comrades” (Rodacy Kamraci) after their release from prison, appeared alongside figures who sympathise with the Russian regime, and publicly questioned the existence of gas chambers in Nazi extermination camps—a shocking statement in a country so brutally victimised by German occupation. This has prompted liberal NGOs to call for the party’s outright delegalisation.

The consequences of these shifts are difficult to overstate. Support for parties to the right of PiS has just exceeded 20%, though these forces combined won less than 8% in 2023. The prospect of a future PiS-Confederation government grows more fragile as their conflict intensifies, while the Crown remains far too unpredictable and malevolent, in the eyes of other right-wing actors, to be a viable coalition partner.

Donald Tusk and the liberal media have already begun mobilising their electorate, using Braun as a potent scarecrow. Their strategy for the next elections appears simple: march as one unified bloc to exploit the ‘winner’s bonus’ built into the D’Hondt system. If the conservative side remains fragmented and too many votes fall to the Crown, the Right may fail to form a government even with a technical majority. That would mean a peculiar reversal of 2023, when PiS won the most seats but was outflanked and removed from power by a broad alliance of liberal, left-wing, and centrist parties. Today, the creation of an equally broad front on the Right looks far less likely: the internal differences are deeper, the competition fiercer, and some of the new actors far more radical and uncontrollable.

Paradoxically, the only figure who still commands broad trust across this fractured camp is newly elected President Karol Nawrocki. Nominated by PiS but running as a formally non-partisan national conservative—and at times criticising the party during his campaign—he enjoys respect among voters and leaders from different wings of the Right, and many see the energy he has brought to the presidential palace as a potential umbrella under which a future right-of-centre coalition could be rebuilt despite bitter party rivalries. 

Pictured: Poland’s President Karol Nawrocki—the one uniting factor between the feuding factions on the Polish Right.