Polish MP steps into London migrant worker's shoes

Artur Debski. Photo: wikipedia

Artur Debski of liberal party Your Movement intends to live on a budget of 100 pounds per week.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do there,” he told The Daily Telegraph's Central European correspondent Matthew Day.

“I’m 45 years old and my English isn’t great. I’ll have to work with my hands, in a kitchen, perhaps, or in a shop.”

Debski told the paper that he wants to see “why the systems in Britain are working and why they’re not in Poland,” arguing that job centres are ineffective and expensive to run in Poland, but that he had heard their UK equivalents are more efficient.

Demographer Professor Krystyna Iglicka from Warsaw's Lazarski University has estimated that half a million Poles emigrated in 2013 alone, with the UK proving among the most popular destinations.

The recent wave indicates that over 2.5 million Poles are currently living abroad, with Poland's 2004 accession to the EU providing the catalyst.

Although Debski claims that he is concerned that “so many of our young people are thinking about leaving,” others have dismissed the endeavour as a publicity stunt.

Your Movement party leader Janusz Palikot is known for his unconventional PR style. In January 2012, he declared he was going to smoke some marijuana in parliament as a means of testing laws on possession. Ultimately, he lit a marijuana joss stick. Before leaving Prime Minister Tusk's Civic Platform party in 2010, he once brandished a gun and a sex toy at a press conference on sexual abuse. (nh)