Poland’s rainbow coalition – led by pro-EU centrist and Prime Minister Donald Tusk – has turned out to be one almighty let down for his cheerleaders in Brussels.

One year on from an election which saw the nationalist Law and Justice party win the most votes but without enough seats to form a working government, Tusk’s cobbled-together alliance was supposed to be a new broom, ending years of hostility with Brussels and shifting to Western European norms in terms of migration, cultural values and more.

Oh boy, how wrong Brussels was! Not only did migrant pushbacks continue on the Polish border – although there was no direct evidence Tusk ordered this – but Tusk’s government refused to sign up to the latest burden-sharing EU migrant pact, while Tusk promised further fortifications and an exclusion zone on his country’s border with Belarus, as well as legal security for border officials who use firearms if needed.

Now, to top it all, Tusk has announced plans to temporarily suspend the right to asylum. To be fair, Poland apparently faces weaponised migration orchestrated by Belarus of mostly Asian migrants. Still, the fact Tusk feels compelled to do this says a lot about what he knows Poland will accept – versus a soft touch country like Britain – and what he thinks of those EU norms.

Indeed, Brussels’ blue-eyed boy said of the decision, “I will demand recognition in Europe for this decision”, despite the fact under international law countries are obliged to offer people this right to claim asylum. The vast majority of these illegal immigrants are heading for Western Europe, so Poland also feels it is doing the EU a solid in stopping them.

Anyway, so much for a new broom. But, as I repeatedly warned in these pages for months, Tusk’s centrist aspirations always bumped up against a country which may have rejected the outgoing nationalists on its hardline abortion stance but not its tough stand on migration. Opinion polls show 86 per cent of Poles back the use of firearms in self-defence by border officials.

Truth be told this is a part of a wider issue for the EU and Poland, as Tusk’s motley crew coalition has either aped Law and Justice policy, or backtracked on its pledges when faced with competing Left-wing and Right-wing views in the ruling coalition.

Sure, Tusk sweet-talked Brussels into ending its rule of law claims against Warsaw on the strength of his good word. But in areas like migration, it is very much business as usual. Ditto welfare, with the coalition led by Tusk’s centrist Civic Platform augmenting Law and Justice welfare policies, along with public-sector pay rises, despite previously lambasting the nationalists on this.

Pledges on doubling the tax-free allowance on personal income, cuts to capital gains tax, and reducing employers’ social security payments have also gone nowhere.

Most embarrassing for Tusk – on the issue of abortion, which is really why he is PM in the first place – a vote to stop prosecuting people who assist with abortions failed in a parliamentary vote, all because of conservatives within his ruling coalition. Meanwhile, a draft bill prepared by the Left introducing same-sex unions has also been opposed by those same conservatives.

Not all of this is Tusk’s fault except perhaps to say that both the EU and he were naive to think this motley crew coalition could deliver. But on migration, as well as the EU Green Deal and guarding Polish sovereignty in the corridors of power in Brussels, it seems like nothing has changed, hardly a shock given how conservative a bunch the Polish people still remain.

Truth be told, Tusk’s coalition’s approach to the rule of law also leaves much to be desired, with the forced and legally-questionable removal of appointees from the old regime without all the necessary safeguards, all in the name of ostensibly correcting the last government’s mistakes. Even Tusk admits it can be necessary to do things “not fully compliant with the law”.

For the EU, this must seem like a massive letdown, a realisation that the nationalist government was actually far more reflective of Polish opinion than many in Brussels would admit. I’d wager the same is true for other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, especially Hungary, led by EU bête noire Viktor Orbán, who Tusk backs when it comes to rejecting the EU migrant pact.

Just as nationalist leaders like Georgia Meloni in Italy, or Geert Wilders in the Netherlands (and, I’d wager, a future President Marine Le Pen in France) must come to terms with how liberal their countries have become, the reverse is true for Tusk. So much for a Polish revolution. Instead it’s business as usual with Brussels watching sheepishly from the sidelines.