Theresa May offers olive branch to EU boss Donald Tusk – by praising the 80s resistance of shipyard workers in his Polish hometown
The Brussels boss - who brutally mocked the PM on Instagram after the Salzburg summit – was an anti-Soviet student leader in the city at the time
THERESA May held an olive branch out to EU chief Donald Tusk yesterday – by praising the 80s resistance of the shipyard workers of his Polish hometown.
Mr Tusk – who brutally mocked the Prime Minister on Instagram after the Salzburg summit – was an anti-Soviet student leader in the city of Gdansk at the time.
His student association became part of the “Solidarity” movement founded when 17,000 shipyard workers stunned the world by going on strike and seized control of the Lenin shipyard.
The praise came as the PM used her party conference speech to champion free markets – and credit “ordinary people” for overthrowing the Communist “closed” markets of three decades ago.
In a direct attack on Labour and its election slogan, she said it was the “many, not the few” who had chosen free markets to improve their lives.
Mrs May said: “Closed markets and command economies were not overthrown by powerful elites, but by ordinary people.
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“By the shipyard workers of Gdansk, who led the resistance in Poland. By people of all backgrounds who took part in the Velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia.
“By the people of East Berlin, who tore down that wall. When the many have the freedom to choose, they choose freedom.”
EU Council chief Mr Tusk incensed Downing Street after the Salzburg summit by mocking Mrs May with the running joke in Brussels that Britain’s wants to have its cake and eat it in Brexit talks.
Taking to Instagram after the summit he posted a picture of himself and the PM at a cake stand in Austrian city with the caption: “A piece of cake, perhaps? Sorry, no cherries.”