Alan Fimister

Poland was the largest state in Europe for over two centuries. It was a multi-ethnic commonwealth, a refuge for Jews, a bulwark of the counter-reformation with religious liberty and an elected monarchy. Jan III Sobieski, King of the Republic of Poland, reversed the millennium-long expansion of Islam at the gates of Vienna in 1683. If Rome was the heart of the faith, Poland was Christendom’s spear. In the 20th century, Józef Piłsudski prevented the Bolsheviks from exporting the Russian Revolution to the West. And John Paul II drove a stake through the heart of the USSR. The Poles do not believe that they need any lessons about freedom or sacrifice from the European Union. Yet the EU is pursuing Poland for its alleged attack on democracy.

There was a certain degree of cynicism when the Pope decided to place the EU’s founder on the path to canonisation earlier this month. The veneration of an ‘arch euro-federalist’ may seem like an overtly political decision from the See of Rome: a love letter from one unaccountable supranational bureaucracy to another. But in truth the piety and integrity of Robert Schuman — a man born a German citizen who served as both French prime minister and foreign minister — make him a good candidate for sainthood. I am a great admirer of Schuman and I do, in fact, consider him a saint. But after years devoted to the study of his life, I found myself a passionate opponent of Britain’s membership of the European Union and campaigned for us to leave.