EUROPEAN Council chief Donald Tusk attacked opponents of the European Union as “today’s Bolsheviks” at the weekend.

Mr Tusk, a former Polish prime minister from the centre-right Civic Platform party whose appointment to the senior EU role was bitterly opposed by Poland’s current Law and Justice government, spoke in Lodz to mark 100 years since Polish independence at the end of the first world war.

He praised Polish nationalist leader Joseph Pilsudski for “conquering the Bolsheviks” — Poland fought against the Red Army in 1920 — and in the process “defending the Western community against political barbarians.” He also saluted Polish Solidarity union leader Lech Walesa, who fought against Poland’s socialist government in the 1980s, for “conquering the Bolsheviks in a symbolic way.

“Why shouldn’t you be able to defeat the contemporary Bolsheviks?” he asked, adding in a jibe at Poland’s right-wing government, which has repeatedly clashed with the EU: “Whoever takes steps against our strong position in Europe is really taking steps against Polish independence.”

Alex Gordon, who convened the Lexit left leave campaign in Britain’s 2016 referendum on EU membership, said Mr Tusk’s remarks gave “an alarming insight into the mind of the political elite of the EU.

“They conflate the policies of the EU with historic anti-communism. The October Revolution of 1917 and the Soviet Union brought two world wars to an end, and yet this is what Tusk and no doubt others see as their historic enemy. It tells you all you need to know about the political traditions and trajectory of the European Union.”