Steven Barrett – Barrister
Published 31 Oct 2026A description of the lead up to, and the fundamental disagreements about the EU that led to armed police on the streets of Warsaw threatening Judges.
H/T to Perry de Havilland at Samizdata for the link.
On X, Brivael le Pogam posted:
🚨 European union and globalists just crossed a line it can’t uncross. And almost nobody noticed. 🚨
⚠️ Friday night in Warsaw, the president of Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal was suspended for a month. Within hours, police sealed off the building. The head of the country’s highest court was left standing outside the gates of his own court. Protesters cut the chain on the gate with a saw. The President of Poland turned his plane around mid-flight to Senegal and rushed home in the middle of the night.
Donald Tusk’s response: “Restoring the rule of law is our duty. There is no other way.”
Read that again. Restoring the rule of law with riot police around a constitutional court.
⚠️ Whether you like PiS and its judges is not the point. The point is the precedent. A government just showed that you can push out the head of a supreme court through an internal maneuver, secure it with uniforms, and call it “the rule of law.” The next government, whoever it is, now has the playbook.
And Brussels? Not one word of condemnation.
The same Brussels that froze billions for Poland for years in the name of judicial independence. That triggered Article 7. That unlocked everything within weeks the moment the “right” government took power.
⚠️ The message to 450 million Europeans is crystal clear: the rule of law is no longer a rule. It’s a label. You stick it on your allies and peel it off your enemies.
And that’s exactly where everything breaks.
A civilization rests on one thing: trust in the rules. That the rule applies to you the same as to me. That a judge doesn’t depend on who won the last election. When that trust dies, everything else follows. Slowly at first. Then all at once.
Look around.
⚠️ Security: a high-intensity war on our doorstep for over four years, armies we let wither for three decades, a defense that still depends on Washington, and a continent unable to decide anything fast.
⚠️ Economy: energy we can’t afford, industry packing up and leaving, not a single tech giant at American or Chinese scale, growth running in place, and a regulatory machine that produces more rules than companies.
⚠️ Politics: governments hanging on by a handful of votes, voters who no longer believe anyone, and trust in institutions at rock bottom everywhere.
At the top, an elite that spent twenty years telling us everything was fine, that the project was irreversible, that the only real danger was “populists.” They’re taking on water from every side. And they know it.
When a system feels its legitimacy slipping through its fingers, it does exactly what Warsaw just did: it replaces persuasion with force, and calls it virtue.
It never starts with a spectacular collapse. It starts with one institution bypassed “for a good cause.” Then a second. Then you stop counting.
🚨 Warsaw, October 30, 2026. Remember the date.
The other dominoes are already tipping.
Also on X, Dariusz Wiewiórka points to the pipelines, essential to Germany, that run through Poland as the key to understanding the dispute:
I’ll explain to you exactly what’s happening in Poland.
After the destruction of Nord Stream, the German industry fell into an extreme crisis and is simply dying without cheap Russian gas. Due to the war in Ukraine, it’s through Poland that the last two functioning pipelines from Russia to Germany are running. Yamal with a capacity of 33 billion m³ and the Druzhba oil pipeline. Germany, to save its industry, must take control of Poland, and that’s exactly what they’re doing. The rest is just background.
