The people of Poland woke up this morning slightly dazed, slightly confused, by the million-strong army of industrious party activists who were busily engaged in removing and ecologically disposing of the election campaign posters that had appeared over the last six weeks of intense but cheerful campaigning.

Battered but proud, ex-prime minister Jarosław Kaczyński spoke to the reporters assembled at PiS headquarters as he struggled into his high-visibility overalls: “We didn’t make it but the important thing is – as a tough opposition party – to clean up this mess which the democratic process necessarily entails. I congratulate Donald Tusk and look forward to meeting him today on the [main Warsaw road] Trasa Łazienka as we take down our pictures.” He quipped: “Donaldek will be working up the right hand side of the street while I will be on the left.” His brother, Lech Kaczyński, president of Poland, will not be joining in the clean-up effort as the constitution forbids the president from interfereing in the democcratic process of elections.

There was jubiliation in the PO HQ. Donald Tusk, heavy-duty wire-snippers in hand, was carried shoulder high to the first lamp post on the left as you walk out of the building and triumphantly cut loose a large paste-board image of himself. To a chanting, clapping crowd he turned and said: “So that life will be better. For Everyone.” Taking their cue from the probable next-prime minister of Poland, some two hundred activists, young and old, flooded down the street, tearing tatty cardboard and paper election posters from the crash barriers on the central median. This was no time for narrow party-political interests. PiS, LiD and PSL posters were also removed by the enthusiastic volunteers as a team of professional outdoor advertising specialists took down a giant poster of losers Zyta Gilowska, Zbigniew Ziobro, Zbigniew Religa and Jarosław Kaczyński from an enormous billboard, replacing them with a picture of a bag of crisps.

Ziobro himself, although his right arm is in a cast, was on hand. “The injured hand didn’t prevent me from posing for the cameras as I cast my vote,” he said. “So why would it prevent me from doing this civic duty either?”