A hard-won government in Spain can teach us a lot

It’s been a long haul, but Spain at last has a confirmed government again.

That matters to me particularly because we now live in Spain, land of our Brexit exile. Others, though, might also find much of relevance in the difficult road that got us here, littered as it was with obstacles, many of them self-inflicted.

Pedro Sánchez addresses the Cortes

Let’s start with the positives.

Spain has its first coalition government since the end of the Franco dictatorship and the restoration of democracy in 1978. That brings it into line with most countries in Europe, where government always requires negotiation between parties and compromise to reach an agreement that commands broad support. It’s not the case in Britain, of course, where Members of Parliament are still elected by simple majorities in individual constituencies. As a result, parties with minority support nationally can command a huge majority in Parliament. As is the case today.

I’m not sure that this leads to better government.

Pedro Sánchez, now the confirmed Prime Minister of Spain after holding the role in an acting capacity since last April, and leader of the centre-left Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), has agreed a joint programme for progressive government with Pablo Iglesias, of the anti-austerity, harder-left Unidas Podemos Party (UP). That has kept the right well away from power, even though the far-right Vox now has a major parliamentary presence.

You read that right. A joint programme for progressive government. And the hard right out of power.

How many, in Britain, the United States, Poland, Hungary, Turkey or Brazil would give their eye teeth to have such a government? And how many, particularly in Britain, the United States, Poland, Turkey or Brazil would like to see the far right well away from government?

So, now the negatives. 

The Spanish left nearly didn’t pull the trick off, and its worst enemy was itself. As in Britain and the United States especially.

That joint programme between PSOE and UP was something that could have been agreed months ago. Say, straight after the General Election in April, which left the PSOE as the biggest single party in the Spanish Parliament – the Cortes – with 123 seats, while UP had 42. PSOE was up significantly, while UP had lost seats, but at least between them, they had 165 MPs, just 11 short of the 176 needed for a majority in the 350-seat Cortes.

They couldn’t reach agreement. After six months of negotiation, new elections had to be called in November. Both parties lost seats, three in the case of the PSOE, though it was still the biggest party in Parliament, while UP lost seven. Now their task had become far harder, since they’re now 21 behind the magic number for a majority.

Far worse still was the surge in support for the quasi-fascist Vox, which shot up from 24 to 52 seats to become the third biggest parliamentary presence.

The PSOE-UP failure to compromise before the November election meant that when they finally did, the two parties of the left were working from a weaker position, and against a far more vigorous opposition. Note and learn, British Labourites or American Democrats: you risk it all when you decide to dig your heels in and refuse to budge on principle. Insisting on doing it all may leave you unable to do anything at all. The price of intransigence can be a Trump or Boris government.

Sánchez has at least avoided that fate, but by the tightest of margins. He couldn’t win his investiture on Sunday (yes, Spanish MPs can work on Sundays) when an absolute majority was required, in the first vote; on Tuesday however, with the bar lowered to requiring simply more Yes votes than Noes, he squeaked through, by just two votes with eighteen abstentions.

Those abstentions were won through hard negotiation. Sánchez had to make agreements with eight parties, covering 313 different commitments, to secure those abstaining votes. Not all those commitments are compatible with each other. Government, with so much to deliver to keep minor parties at least neutral, and up against such a powerful right, isn’t going to be easy.

This is particularly true in the specific circumstances of Spain. Some of the commitments Sánchez has had to make concern the status of Catalonia and its desire for independence. That’s something he can’t grant and retain his support in the rest of Spain; it’s going to be challenging to give the Catalans enough, short of independence, to keep Tuesday’s abstainers in line.

With a powerful and ferocious right-wing Opposition, he and Iglesias are going to have torrid time implementing their programme. It’s going to be enthralling to watch. I’m at least glad they have the opportunity to try – after the crushing defeat of the British left in December, being able to do as much as Sánchez can in Spain seems a distant dream.

There were some good moments in the investiture debate.

One of the most moving was the standing ovation offered to Aina Vidal, who turned up to vote despite undergoing aggressive treatment for cancer.

Aina Vidal stands to acknowledge the ovation for her presence

Another was Sánchez’s reference to one of the iconic figures of the Second Spanish Republic, the one overthrown by Franco. Manuel Azaña told his compatriots, “we are all children of the same sun and tributaries of the same river”.

In Britain and the US, I can’t help feeling that we’re all children of the same deeply disrupted climate system, and tributaries to the same traffic jams.

Maybe the Spanish example can help us towards a more encouraging future.

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.