Spanish politics wishing us all a Happy New Year

Two pieces of news, out here in Spain, have struck me as the old year dies. They provide insight into how to form governments and just how much, or how little, we need them.

The first is that the country is about to have a fully constituted government again, rather than one that is in office merely in an acting capacity.

Pedro Sánchez and Pablo Iglesias
Eight months to learn that compromise works better than intransigence

This is a bigger achievement than you might at first think. There were elections back in April, which led to the Spanish Socialist Party, the PSOE, winning 123 parliamentary seats under its leader Pedro Sánchez. That made it the biggest single party while leaving it well short of the 176 required for a majority, but then the left wing Unidas-Podemos (UP), the party that broke spectacularly onto the scene a few years ago under the leadership of the charistmatic radical Pablo Iglesias, also had 42 and the centrist Citizens Party had 57. Surely a majority government could emerge, even without having to call on Catalan or Basque nationalists, some of whom would be inclined to favour the left.

That was not to be. First the Citizens Party made it clear that it was centrist in name only. Under no conditions would it support Sánchez into office. So if there was any sense in which it stood in the centre, it was with a powerful inclination to the right.

Months of negotiations between PSOE and UP made little progress, as neither side was prepared to budge from its entrenched positions. The result was that just seven months after the first election, a second had to be called, in November.

The results were highly educational.

The Citizens Party, which had been so outspoken in its refusal to work with the PSOE, was crushed. Its tally of MPs fell from 57 to just ten. Clearly, voters felt that if the party was going to ally itself only with the conservative Popular Party (PP), then it was just another conservative party and they might just as well vote directly for it. And indeed the PP went from a historic low of 66 to 89 MPs, although the collapse of the pseudo-centrists also had a far more serious consequence: the far-right Vox went from 24 seats to 52, making the third biggest group in the new Parliament. That’s a worrying development for the future.

As for the PSOE and UP, the two parties who couldn’t agree a programme after the April election, clearly voters didn’t like their behaviour. Both lost seats, though the PSOE not that many, falling from 123 to 120. UP, on the other hand, lost 7 which, considering they held just 42, is a much more serious blow.

The punishment handed to the two main parties of the left seems to have had the desired effect. Sánchez and Iglesias have at last found a way of agreeing a programme, including some interesting measures such as increased taxes on high pensions, legislation on euthanasia and climate change, and a reduced role for religious studies in public education.

With the abstention of the left-wing nationalists in Catalonia, which seems highly likely, it now appears that Sánchez will at last go from being acting Prime Minister to being confirmed in the role some time next week.

The message is clear. Pull together on the left and you can achieve some things. Reject all compromise and the voters punish you.

What about the other piece of news?

It seems that the Spanish stock market index, Ibex, ended 2019 up by more than in any year in 2013. Now I know that the position of the stock market is far from a perfect indication of the state of an economy, but it’s nonetheless generally the case that if the economy does badly, stocks and shares fall too. So the news about the Spanish index does somewhat suggest that the economy’s not doing too badly.

So my first bit of news teaches me that a compromise is worth making to get a government that can do some good, a lesson we’d do well to learn on the British left. The second shows that an economy can do fine even without a government for eight months, a lesson, in relativising the importance of government itself, it wouldn’t be bad for every nation to learn.

And on that note, I wish you all a great New Year.

Elections in Spain, and the lessons for the Elections in Britain

Be careful what you wish for.

That seems to be the main lesson from the results of the General Election in my adopted country Spain, on 10 November. A lesson that some people in UK politics might do well to learn. If it isn’t too late already.

Seats won in the Spanish Parliament
The PSOE have the most but are even further from a majority

Take the socialists, or PSOE. 

Its leader, Pedro Sánchez, had been acting Prime Minister since the previous election in April. He headed the biggest party in Parliament, with 123 seats, but that was still well short of the magic number for a majority, 176. He tried to cobble together an agreement with other groups, principally working with a party to his left, Unidas Podemos, but the negotiations repeatedly failed. Both sides blamed the other, and there seems little point in trying to assign responsibility now.

Sánchez decided that he had no choice but to go the country again. He may have been right. After failing to negotiate himself a coalition, he may indeed have had no other option. But far from growing his parliamentary presence to 140, as he had hoped, a position from which he might have had a better chance of building a majority, he ended up losing three seats, leaving him on just 120.

A message for Boris Johnson: merely calling an election doesn’t guarantee that you’ll emerge with the wins you hoped for. Besides, sometimes hung parliaments happen because the electorate is split and unable to endorse one party or another. Then politicians have to find ways to work together.

As for Unidas Podemos, it too paid the price for failing to reach an agreement to govern. Its 42 seats were reduced to 35. A breakaway party from Podemos, Más País, won three seats, so even taken together, these left-wing groupings are down four. If the discussions between Sánchez and the Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias were tough before, they’re going to be a lot tougher now.

The great losers of the night, however, were the centrist grouping, Ciudadanos, Citizens. They couldn’t quite make up their mind about what they stood for, which may be a cautionary tale for Corbynists: if you equivocate, you’ll be punished.

They proclaimed they would not under any conditions join a Sánchez-led coalition, though they claimed to be in the centre and therefore open to working with either side. At the time, they had 57 MPs and could have had a role in leading the country. It was a clear statement that they wanted no part in government, and voters can’t see much point in electing parties that don’t want to govern. 

Besides, there is in Spain a question as central as Brexit is in Britain, which is Catalan separatism. They chose to take a hard position against the separatists, moving them away from the centre ground to positions more closely associated with the far right. Voters prepared to vote for far-right views will generally prefer a far-right party. That they did on this occasion, reducing Ciudadanos from 57 seats to just ten.

Perhaps another lesson for Corbynists flirting with pro-Brexit positions.

The day after his election debacle, the leader of Ciudadanos resigned.

May yet another lesson for Corbynism, and more particularly, for Corbyn.

So who were the great winners of the day?

The traditional right, the equivalent of British Conservatives, the Partido Popular or Popular Party, turns out to be rather more popular than at its disastrous low in April, when it won just 66 seats. This time it took take 88.

But the biggest winner of all was the far right, Vox. It only entered parliament for the first time in April, with 24 seats, far more than they should ever have won, but still containable.

This time, they’ve taken 52. More than twice as many as last time.

And what’s that all down to?

Why, the massive error of Ciudadanos in wanting to be a centrist party and then lurching rightwards, and the failure of the centre left and left to find common ground. They preferred to remain pure in support of their principles than to compromise and enter government. The result was that the far right gained.

In Britain, the situation isn’t entirely similar. There is a party of the far right, but it’s losing momentum as the Conservatives become the voice of the far right themselves, losing their moderate MPs on the way. There is no separate party like Unidas Podemos, instead a faction of the Labour Party, the Corbyn tendency, has taken control of the party.

Even so, there’s much to learn for Britain from the Spanish experience.

• Refusal to compromise doesn’t always yield the results you want.
• Accommodating the far right lets it devour you
• Equivocate and the voters will punish you
• Sometimes you just have to live with hung parliaments, because voters themselves are divided

A former boss of mine used to say that the trouble with having your back to the wall is that you can’t read the writing on it. The writing from Spain strikes me as fairly powerful. But politicians in Britain, with their backs to the election wall, may no longer have the time to read it.

As the dust settles on 13 December, the day after the British general election, we shall see whether they, like the Spanish, are going to have to learn their lesson the hard way. And, sadly, voters with them.