Spanish Elections and Halloween Brexit Extension
Spain is currently in the midst of a triple election season: the April 28 general elections called by incumbent PM Pedro Sánchez, and the other set of elections; the local and European elections to be held on May 26, almost forgotten about and overshadowed by the primordial race to the Moncloa Palace. Nothing less than three sets of different elections in one month – a historic exercise in popular democracy that could alter the course of contemporary Spain, particularly in relation to Cataluña
A minority government led by the Socialist party (PSOE) would be disposed to offer yet more self-government to Catalan nationalist parties in order to obtain their parliamentary support. On the other hand, a government led by the PP in coalition with Ciudadanos, and possibly Vox, in a repetition of the tripartite agreement in Andalucía, could lead to a re-imposition of Article 155 and the possible suspension of regional self-government. Time will tell who wins and what happens. The night of Sunday April 28 promises to be a particularly interesting one. Most of Spain will be glued to the TV as the electoral drama unfolds.
Undoubtedly, Pedro Sánchez chose to go the polls and be democratically baptised by the voters at the end of April, just a few days after the Easter break in Spain when most of the country is on holiday, and not later, as he has been carefully advised that now is the best opportunity to do so. Successive opinion polls put the governing PSOE in the lead. The latest polls give the PSOE a comfortable 10-point lead ahead of nearest rival the Partido Popular (PP). Better to launch your boat at high tide than when the tide is out.
Looks like in the present unstable and uncertain times many left-wing supporters who had previously decided to give their votes to Podemos have chosen to fall back in behind Pedro Sánchez and return ‘home’ to the PSOE. It remains to be seen how many more moderate centrist minded voters who have traditionally voted for the PSOE will remain faithful, given what has happened in Cataluña, or jump ship and swap over to Ciudadanos whose charismatic young Catalan leader, Albert Rivera, is a fierce critic of Pedro Sánchez’s continued attempts to stretch out a hand to and pact with the Catalan separatists to keep himself in power in Madrid.
Another factor of great interest in these elections, and in particular, the 28-A general elections, is the incognita of how many votes the new right-wing conservative party Vox will attract. Opinion polls suggest Vox will get around 11% of the vote or between 31-36 seats in the Spanish Congress. If true, not a bad result, considering that up until now they have had no parliamentary representation at all in the national parliament.
Vox was originally set up in late 2013, but until last December’s Andalucía regional elections had no representation in any Spanish democratic institutions and was regarded as a largely irrelevant and marginal force on the side-lines. The unexpected success in Andalucía, when Vox obtained nearly 11% of the vote and 12 regional deputies, changed overnight this situation and brought Vox onto the centre stage. As a direct result, party membership figures and popular support started to surge across many parts of Spain as more people sympathetic to Vox’s ideas of national unity and defence of traditional conservative values began to take the party seriously and see it as a credible contender for power at all levels of political power from the local and regional level to national government as well.
The sudden rise of Vox has served to politically divide the right and caused serious problems for the PP in particular led by its new leader Pablo Casado. Support for the PP is currently at a historic low. Many traditionally minded conservative voters have decided to desert the PP in favour of Vox, accusing the PP of having betrayed and abandoned traditional conservative ideals and principles. Vox has skilfully managed to occupy the political vacuum on the right in Spanish politics as an increasingly liberal and centrist PP party apparatchik and leadership has continued its ideological shift towards the centre.
The 28-A election results will be interesting to see if the decline of the PP is confirmed.
The PP has found itself in a difficult sandwich type position losing voters on both sides of the political spectrum; right wing traditionally conservative minded voters to Vox and on the other hand losing more liberal centre ground voters to Ciudadanos. The PP is effectively in danger of being squeezed out of Spanish politics completely.
Recent opinion polls suggest that Vox will be the third party in the upcoming municipal elections in Madrid, surprisingly ahead of both Ciudadanos and the PSOE, but behind Más Madrid and the PP in first and second place respectively. As a result, Spain’s emblematic capital city, after four years of rule by Podemos could be set to be governed by a three-way style coalition led by the PP similar to what has happened in Andalusia with the PP, Ciudadanos and Vox. Together the three parties are predicted to gain 56% of the vote. The retaking of Madrid city council, all be it in coalition with Vox and Ciudadanos, should be of some comfort for the present PP leadership.
Apart from the PP, the other party losing ground at a national level in the opinion polls is the left wing Podemos party led by Pablo Iglesias which has seen its level of support fall to just 13%. Podemos claims a deliberate campaign in the Spanish media against the party and its leadership allegedly orchestrated by some high-ranking police chiefs favourable to Mariano Rajoy’s government, in what they call the ‘sewers of the state’, has negatively affected the party’s public image amongst many otherwise sympathetic voters.
The acquisition of a luxury country house, estimated at around €615,000, in Galapagar forty kilometres to the north west of Madrid city, by Pablo Iglesias and his wife and fellow leader of Podemos Irene Montero, has been seized upon by certain elements of the Spanish media as an apparent contradiction of the radical left-wing antiestablishment founding principles of Podemos and the 15M movement which the party was supposed to be originally based on in defence of ordinary working-class people.
Sr Iglesias is said by many local party activists in Madrid to have reneged on his humble origins in Madrid’s working class Vallecas district abandoning the neighbourhood for the posher up market suburban residential area of Galapagar. He and his wife have been accused of betraying their proletarian origins and become members of the Spanish political elite, which the party was supposed to be founded against in defence of ordinary working-class people.
Without a doubt, Spain is at a turning point and much depends on the results of the general elections on the 28 April. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Turning our attention away from Spain and towards crisisstricken Brexit Britain, the country is trying to take a welldeserved break from the neverending Brexit chaos after PM Theresa May asked for a second short extension on April 10 and ended up accepting a six-month flextension to Britain’s EU membership. Halloween has been the date aptly chosen by the EU27 for the next instalment of the ongoing nightmarish Brexit drama.
May’s government is as divided over the contentious issue of Brexit, as the entire country is. Unable to get her withdrawal agreement approved by her party and its DUP supporters or passed by the Commons either on three different occasions, May has decided to talk to Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour leadership as a last resort and try and get them to help her out of her Brexit black hole. Buoyed up by some recent opinion polls which give Labour a lead over the Tories in the forthcoming local and European elections understandably the Labour leadership is in no rush to sign a Brexit agreement to help May get better electoral results and make her life easier. The crossparty Brexit talks do not seem to be making any progress as May is reportedly holding tight to her red lines regarding a customs union, single market alignment and a confirmatory vote. Like this there isnt´ much to negotiate. The Brexit stalemate continues without end in sight.
The Conservatives are in a very difficult position, completely of their own making. Brexit has been their bright idea and they have put the entire country through years of shambolic chaos and suffering which they have been incapable of resolving. Up until now, May’s government has treated the Brexit crisis as an internal Tory party affair and not as a national emergency. From the very beginning May has steadfastly refused to try to reach a cross party national consensus on such an important issue for the whole country. This attitude has been highly unfair and gravely irresponsible as the results of the 2016 referendum were very close with less than 4% of difference between Leave and Remain. With such a narrow majority, no responsible government should embark on a radical plan of major far-reaching constitutional change affecting the country for generations to come. And this is precisely what May’s government has pretended to do, with half of the country against her, until they ran into quicksand in the House of Commons where they have no majority.
This refusal to speak to other parties has put the union with Scotland and Northern Ireland under great strain, and it remains to be seen what will eventually happen when Brexit is eventually settled. The SNP First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, is determined to call a second independence referendum shortly after Brexit is settled. And both sides of the divided community in Northern Ireland are against the handling of Brexit by May’s government, each for different reasons. Again, it remains to be seen how Brexit will affect the Good Friday Peace Agreement. The Nationalist community are demanding border polls for a United Ireland as a way out of a hard Brexit which they say seriously threatens the 21-year-old peace agreement.
May’s government has reportedly spent somewhere in the region of £4.2 billion on Brexit preparations so far. This is a scandal of valuable public money being squandered instead of being invested in the NHS where it is very much needed. It is highly ironic that Boris Johnson had written on the side of his Brexit bus during the 2016 campaign his promise that the NHS would get a £350 million a week as a Brexit bonus. Instead the reverse is true. Brexit has cost the British taxpayer lots of money, not to mention the costs to British business for lost business and preparations for a possible no deal scenario. All in all, a shambolic disaster.
Where are we going now? If a withdrawal agreement is not passed before the European elections, scheduled to be held in just over a month’s time on May 23 in the UK, the UK government has until the end of October to pass a withdrawal agreement for an orderly exit from the EU. If not, we are back to square one with the threat of a no-deal Brexit if another third extension is not given. Most of the British population are sick and tired of the B word and would prefer not to hear it mentioned again. Personally, as a convinced remainer, I would hope that Brexit is quietly forgotten about and by October Article 50 eventually revoked. It is not in Britain’s national interest to be locked out of the world’s biggest and most successful single market in an ever more globalised world