“We want the elections to European Parliament in 2009 to be a kind of a referendum against the anti-democratic Brussels and Treaty of Lisbon,” said Mr Ganley at a weekend rally, broadcast live on Polish television and which received widespread coverage.

The Polish Libertas line-up has yet to be finalised but is expected to draw on figures from the populist Self Defence party and the ultra-Catholic League of Polish Families (LPR), an anti-abortion, anti-Semitic, anti-gay grouping.

LPR figures at the Libertas event included creationists and death penalty proponents, as well as a former MEP who once suggested that “deviant” gay rights marchers in Warsaw “need to be walloped with a big stick”.

LPR and Self Defence have been relegated to the fringes of politics after failing to re-enter parliament in 2007; their voters have been absorbed by the main opposition, conservative Law and Justice Party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

Charming. A referendum against the Lisbon Treaty, gay rights, abortion rights, contraception, women's rights, evolution, the age of the earth, that silly Galileo chap, and those nasty Jewish types. Good stuff.