Poland’s prime minister gets the chop

ON DECEMBER 6TH Beata Szydlo, then Poland’s prime minister, was the special guest on Radio Maryja, a conservative radio station that is close to the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party. Her appearance was overshadowed by something everyone had known for weeks: Mrs Szydlo was on her way out. And indeed by the following evening, she was thanking Poles for her two years in office. On December 11th Mateusz Morawiecki, her deputy, was installed as prime minister. Mrs Szydlo was allowed to stay on; but she is now her former deputy’s deputy.

The switch was ordered by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, PiS’s reclusive party leader. Despite earlier speculation, the 68-year-old did not take the job for himself—as he had in 2006, during PiS’s first stint in power. The government is now headed by a more emollient figure: a former banker who also continues to head the ministries of finance and economic development. Mr Morawiecki served in 2010 as an economic adviser to Donald Tusk, who was then prime minister (and is now president of the European Council). PiS and its nationalist followers loathe the liberal Mr Tusk. But Mr Morawiecki, who did not join PiS until March 2016, has won Mr Kaczynski’s trust.