It is 35 years since I was last in Warsaw and the city is unrecognisable. Back then it was grimy and depressing, full of buildings still pockmarked by bomb damage. Nothing worked and nobody smiled. Now it gleams. The historic Old Town has been lovingly rebuilt and restored. Everything else is new: the cars, the shops, the office blocks and apartment buildings. The fashions are sharp and the teeth are white. It is a powerful tonic for beleaguered liberals. Don’t let the democracy-in-decline-mongers deceive you. Economic and political freedom work. And what the world needs is more of both.

In the early 1990s I was sent as a wet-behind-the ears know-nothing to meetings at the Gdansk Shipyard, legendary home of Lech Walesa and the Solidarity trade union which overthrew the decaying Soviet reg

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