After weeks of waiting, Polish President Lech Kaczyński has finally dismissed four ministers from the two smaller partners in the three-party governing coalition. It leaves the larger Law and Justice Party - led by Kaczyński’s brother Jaroslaw - governing on its own, and, without the support of a majority of the national legislature, the Sejm, requires them to go back to the polls.

All very uninteresting so far. However, Law and Justice (PiS) has long been mooted as a potential partner for David Cameron’s new European endeavour outside the European People’s Party (EPP), and, as such, their fortunes matter an awful lot to the New Tories’ approach to European issues.

Unlike the Czech Civic Democrats, who have already signed up to the new grouping, the PiS are not liberal in any sense, and their social attitudes are highly authoritarian: hardening Poland’s already strictly anti-choice abortion laws, prohibiting all recognition of homosexual relationships, banning trading on Sundays, and reintroducing the death penalty.

However, this streak was not enough to appease its coalition partners, who are even more authoritarian: the homophobic Catholic nationalists of the League of Polish Families and the back-to-the-Earth agrarian revanchist socialists of Self-Defense of the Republic of Poland (who, indicative of the unifying ideology of oppression practised by both left and right, are merging!). The PiS itself lost seven MPs earlier this year that thought the government’s position on abortion was too soft on rape victims. Charming.

There are a range of palatable options, though. The largest is the Civic Platform (the sister party of the Czech Civic Democrats), who are encouragingly liberal on both economic and a number of social issues. Their support is concentrated in the less agrarian west of Poland, and amongst the wealthier and better-educated, which, with the Polish economy booming, puts it in a strong position. Another classically liberally-inclined group is the Real Politics Union, which sometimes describes itself as ‘libertarian’. Sadly, it is a damning indictment of Polish political bias that even these ‘libertarians’ deny women their right to an abortion.

If David Cameron is interested in even trying to reform the Conservatives, he has to stay well clear of the rabidly vitriolic fascists that he has threatened to jump into bed with. Moreover, when Poland goes to the poll to elect the new Sejm and its government, the people will determine not just the course taken by their own country, but by the rest of central Europe, which is dominated by Poland. If freedom is to flourish in that part of the world, it is essential that Law and Justice be defeated. For the Tories to give them the time of day is indefensible.