The paper says Gliwice, a post-communist city of 170,000 in the southern Silesia region, illustrates Poland’s “extraordinary 20-year economic expansion”, while Darlington in north-east England has struggled to keep pace despite similar size, history and industrial roots.
When Polish plumbers, waiters and fruit-pickers flocked to Britain in the early 2000s, British living standards were more than twice as high as in Poland. Today, the Telegraph says, Britons are only 16% richer and Poland is on track to overtake the UK by around 2030.
Only a decade ago, residents of Gliwice might have envied Darlington’s living standards. Now, according to Eurostat data cited by the paper, people in Gliwice are 45% richer than those in Darlington once living costs are taken into account.
The Telegraph says the fortunes of the two towns capture a wider story: Poland’s fast catch-up versus Britain’s weak growth. Living standards in Darlington, adjusted for purchasing power, are now 14% below the Polish average after being 2.4 times higher 20 years ago.
Gliwice, once ringed by coal mines, steelworks and polluted streets, has reinvented itself around new sectors such as IT, aviation, defense and space. Nationally, average annual growth of almost 4% has helped Polish GDP per capita, in purchasing power terms, to double since 2005; in Gliwice, it has nearly tripled, the paper says.
Unemployment in the town has dropped from about 10% in 2003 to 2.7%. New electric buses, refurbished housing, cafés, craft-beer bars and a major freeway junction linking the A1 and A4 highways all signal rising prosperity.
Local authorities transformed a former coal mine into the New Gliwice Education and Business Centre, which hosts technology companies including satellite and drone manufacturers and is dubbed a “mini-Silicon Valley”.
By contrast, the Telegraph portrays Darlington as emblematic of England’s post-industrial north-east, where regional underinvestment and patchy growth have left “some of Britain’s poorest neighbourhoods” in a town once famed for the world’s first public steam railway.
Experts quoted by the paper say the Tees Valley and wider North East have suffered “strategic underinvestment” from central government, leaving the region vulnerable whenever the British economy slows. Local businesses complain of expensive, infrequent public transport and costly, unreliable rail links to London.
Darlington has attracted more than 1,000 civil service jobs, including a new Treasury economic campus, and benefits from relatively low rents and housing costs. But business owners cited by the Telegraph say the private sector remains fragile, with firms going bust and high levels of deprivation and ill health.
Economist Marcin Piątkowski of Koźmiński University in Warsaw attributes Poland’s rise to what he calls “five Es”: egalitarianism, entrepreneurship, [political] elites, education and Europe – including EU funds that have rebuilt infrastructure and supported stability since 2004.
The report notes that Poland now faces challenges from rising budget deficits and political tensions, while Britain grapples with low growth and recent tax rises. But for many residents, the immediate contrast is psychological as much as economic.
The Telegraph concludes that if current trends continue, Poles may soon talk about British plumbers arriving in search of work – reversing the flow that began two decades ago.
(jh)
Source: The Telegraph, IAR