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The English historian Timothy Garton Ash spent Sunday in Warsaw with friends as they voted in Polands most important election since 1989. Back then, one said, her dominant emotion had been hope. This time it was fear.

So what? Whisper it or shout it from the rooftops, depending on your confidence level but Polands voters have channelled that fear into a stunning tactical win for progressives that denies the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) a majority and creates a path to the prime ministers residence for Donald Tusk.

Tusks Civic Platform and its allies are positioned to form a new coalition with a little over half the seats in parliament, on a historic 74 per cent turnout that saw long queues at polling stations and more under-29s voting than over-60s.

There are caveats (see below), but as things stand Sundays vote was

Confounding. The emergence of anti-democratic politics in what were supposed to be the enthusiastic new democracies of post-Soviet Eastern Europe has been confounding for older EU members and for Brussels. Theyve proved largely powerless to stop populists lying, abusing the institutions of state and pandering to nativism for the sake of power. The trend has been most exaggerated in Hungary (pop. 9.7 million), but most dangerous in Poland (pop. 38 million).

Capture. Under Jarosaw Kaczyski, the PiS has systematically re-staffed and repurposed key bastions of Polish democracy for its own purposes. Its stacking of the judiciary with politically compliant judges has been comprehensively documented and reported. Outcomes include a de facto abortion ban and LGBT-free zones covering a third of the country.

Less widely understood outside Poland has been the PiSs capture of

Charisma. Tusk is a Blairite figure who started on the centre-right rather than the centre-left but earned a second act in politics by articulating the hopes and frustrations of Polands pro-EU urban middle class.

Prime minister from 2007-14 and President of the European Council from 2014-19, hes as popular in the cities as he is loathed in the PiSs eastern rural heartland. Change for the better is inevitable, he told huge, cheering crowds in Warsaw two weeks ago. That was true only if voters agreed Kaczyskis co-opting of the state had to stop. It seems they did nudged by the EU.

Cash. A promise of up to 35 billion in EU funds withheld because of Kaczyskis assault on the rule of law has added rocket fuel to Tusks campaign.

Caveats. That money will take time to be disbursed, and wont materialise at all if Tusk cant form a coalition. Kaczyski, still leader of Polands single biggest party, will likely be given the first chance and none other than Lech Walesa, founder of Solidarity, warned yesterday Kaczyski would come up with something rather than cede power.

And yet PiSs only potential coalition partner on the far right has said it isnt interested. Tusk by contrast has partners lined up to his left and on the centre-right. Theyre smiling in Warsaw, and the sound of autumn winds in Brussels and Kyiv could be sighs of relief.

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