The success of Vox should come as a warning for mainstream Tories
The surge of the hard-right Vox party in Spain illustrates the existential dangers now facing mainstream conservatism in Europe.
Vox’s 10.2 per cent share of the vote was undeniably a triumph for the party – but it was also a disaster for Spain’s traditional conservative Popular Party (PP).
In short, Vox cannibalised the wider conservative vote, fatally undermining any hope of forming a conservative coalition in Madrid. The result left the PP with just 16.8 per cent of the vote – almost half its tally of 33 per cent gained in the 2016 election.
There are also some stark warnings
in the Spanish results for British mainstream Tories as they contemplate their own a populist rebellion over Brexit.
One of the questions prior to Sunday’s vote was whether hotblooded Vox voters would ultimately back away from the insurgent Vox, making a cold-blooded calculation that a vote for the PP increased the chances of forming a Right-wing coalition in Madrid. But they did not do so. The astonishing Vox surge, with its twin underlying drivers of nostalgic nationalism and a deep sense of betrayal by the political establishment are very far from unique to Spain.
Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, which early polling suggests will halve the number of Tory MEPS, is fuelled by these same two sentiments: betrayal over Brexit and a feeling that the traditional party of patriotism has lost its nerve.
However far to the Right the PP moved, it was always going to be outflanked by Vox; a party of protest that was free to indulge all the frustrations of its swelling support base without having realistically to consider being in government.
Vox did not make equal inroads among the Socialists (PSOE), who will now be able to form another weak governing coalition in Madrid.
This is a dilemma that faces all mainstream conservative parties in Europe – and the reason why Angela Merkel in Germany, resists the desire on the Right of her CDU party to tack Right and neuter the threat from Alternative for Germany (AFD).
It tends not to work. The net result for Europe is weak and fractured governments of both Left and Right.
The political forces on show in Spain, with its mix of nostalgic nationalism and a narrative of betrayal, are very similar to Brexit – as is the prospect of a weak and divided socialist coalition government waiting in the wings.