Origins The party was founded by Janusz Palikot, a Polish millionaire who served as the MP of
Civic Platform between 2005 and 2010. During his mandate, he became known for controversial and eccentric stunts; in 2007, he appeared on a television program wearing a t-shirt that read "I am gay". He also attacked his own party on LGBT issues, arguing that its inaction was more detrimental to LGBT rights than socially conservative parties such as
League of Polish Families and
Law and Justice were. The same year, he made a press conference wielding a
toy gun and a
dildo. He would frequently accuse political opponents of being closeted homosexuals, including accusing
Roman Giertych of having a "suppressed homosexual passion" and offering 50,000 PLN for anyone who could prove Giertych's purported homosexuality. In July 2010,
Janusz Palikot—then still a member of
Civic Platform (PO)—suggested that the late President
Lech Kaczyński was himself to blame for the
Polish Air Force Tu-154 crash in
Smolensk, Russia. In the aftermath of the resulting controversy, Palikot announced plans to create his own social movement. Palikot claimed that Kaczyński "has blood on his hands" and "bears moral responsibility" for the disaster, and in face of the backlash, both from his party and the public, he created his blog where he claimed: "There are 10 million of us! That many people in Poland believe that Lech Kaczyński or his milieu brought about the Smolensk catastrophe" and declared that he would found a movement against "bishops and elites". On 2 October, he organized the "Modern Poland" congress in
Warsaw, attended by several thousand. At the congress, Palikot announced his 15-point program. His 15 postulates included separation of Church and sttae, civil unions for same-sex couples, universal access to the Internet,
first-past-the-post elections in Poland (instead of
proportional representation, abolition of the
Polish Senate, and abolition of parliamentary immunity. His program was described as an "articulation of anti-clericalism, liberalism, and populism". along with
Kazimierz Kutz. On 9 January 2011, Palikot gave his MP ID card to the
Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity to be auctioned off. On 1 June 2011, Palikot formally registered his movement as a political party called
Palikot Movement (RP). In the
October 2011 parliamentary election, the party received 10 percent of the vote and won 40 seats in the
Sejm, making it the third party in the chamber behind Civic Platform and
Law and Justice (PiS), one of the best debut performances for a party since the end of communism. After the election, one of the MPs of
Democratic Left Alliance (SLD),
Sławomir Kopyciński, decided to leave his party and join Palikot Movement.
Anna Grodzka, the first ever
transgender MP in European history, was elected from the party lists in 2011. Also,
Robert Biedroń became the first openly
gay MP in Polish political history. One parliamentarian,
Roman Kotliński, is a former priest of the Catholic Church. On 8 March 2012,
Łukasz Gibała, head of the Krakow structures of the governing PO, joined Palikot Movement, becoming the 43rd MP of the party. His transfer was somewhat significant in that he is the nephew of the Minister of Justice
Jarosław Gowin. On 3 February 2013, Palikot Movement and
Racja PL started collaboration with
Social Democracy of Poland,
Labour United and
Union of the Left to form an
electoral alliance named
Europa Plus to contest the upcoming European Parliament elections. The project was led by
Marek Siwiec,
Aleksander Kwasniewski and Janusz Palikot. On 6 May 2013, Palikot Movement registered its first local party committee abroad, which had been formed by Poles residing in Brussels, Belgium.
In the Sejm Once in the Sejm, the party came to be seen as unreliable and untrustworthy. Polish journalist
Igor Janke wrote: "Palikot is known to regularly change his mind and opinions – sometimes he voices extreme liberal economic views, sometimes he is a socialist calling for redistribution. Once he was a conservative – now he is a leftist."
Marcin Makowski attacked the movement as "capitalist business" which "preferred to fight for free cannabis rather than for a labour market free of predatory job contracts." Palikot came to be seen as "an eccentric libertarian vodka magnate".
Jan Lityński stated: "We have a Palikot party that was supposed to be left wing, but it failed because the leader Janusz Palikot did not know himself whether he represents a right-wing or left-wing movement. The Palikot party does not have any long-term program but only short-run initiatives." From 2012 onwards, Palikot would take "an abrupt leftward turn" by pursuing alliance with left-leaning parties. In February 2012 he wrote a letter to
Leszek Miller where he insisted on the "need for an authentic left-wing politics". This culminated on 6 October 2013, The party's popularity quickly dwindled; by 2014, the party polled around 3%. Palikot failed to capitalise on his party's success, and the voters increasingly disapproved of what was perceived as his erratic behavior and political inconsistency. The party's aggressively anti-Catholic views provoked a "counter-reformation" movement in Poland, mobilizing Catholics and the right-leaning electorate to halt secularization of the Polish society. This prompted the party to tone down its anti-clericalism and social liberalism and promote free-market economics as an attempt to reinvent the party. The party's 2013 program was seen as very fiscally conservative - it postulated abolition of
Social Insurance Institution to "free companies from unnecessary burdens and reduce
shadow economy", and a flat 20%
VAT rate, which would have increased the VAT rate for food and medicine.
Downfall The party founded an electoral alliance
Europa Plus together with
Labour Union,
SDPL and the
Union of the Left. On 29 May 2014, Europa Plus was disbanded. In May 2015, Palikot ran in the
2015 Polish presidential election. He won 1.4% of the vote, considered a "derisory" amount given the party's 2011 success. The alliance was boycotted by a newly-founded left-wing
Razem party, which objected to the presence of liberal elements such as Palikot and his party in the alliance. As a result, Razem ran separately. In the
2015 Polish parliamentary election (held on 25 October 2015), the United Left list was led by Your Movement's
Barbara Nowacka and received only 7.6% of the vote, below the 8% threshold, leaving TR without parliamentary representation. Most of TR's voters from 2011 abandoned it in the 2015 election, including 25% of the party's voters defecting to the
Kukiz'15 party. Razem won over 3.6% of the vote, which was not enough to cross the 5% electoral threshold, but did suffice for the 3% threshold needed for a party to receive state funding. In the
2019 Polish parliamentary election, the party stood under the banner of
The Left. The party disbanded in January 2023. ==Ideology==