Has Feijóo's PP already tamed Abascal's Vox?
What's the point of voting for Vox if the Popular Party appears to be the winning horse on the right in polls?
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I was going to write something about the energy and social security debates in parliament in Madrid, which was holding a late August session today, but it was just the same old boring party-political ideological positions, mostly being read out from the tribune by second-class MPs that almost no one in Spain has heard of, and most of them seemed to have difficulty not mumbling and stuttering as they read out the pre-prepared party line. The government won its energy vote, as it was expected too, because the debates in the Spanish Congress never change the result parties have agreed to before they all go in to the chamber. Much more interesting, and following on from the comments about Ciudadanos the other day, is what Vox leader Abascal has said.
"The relationship with the Popular Party and with Alberto Nuñez Feijóo is absolutely normalised for Vox", said Abascal in parliament: "and I have no doubt that in the future it will be a normal, fluid relationship with another political representative. We have no doubt that we have to build an alternative to Pedro Sánchez and we trust the Popular Party also has no doubts about that".
Polls since the PP leadership hit-job to swap Casado for Feijóo in the spring have favoured the PP against Pedro Sánchez's Socialist Party (PSOE) but also against Abascal and Vox on the right. Over the past 10 years, Spanish voters have already seen two parties with revolutionary or reformist parties rise and fall. Podemos and Ciudadanos both accepted being the junior partner in coalitions with the larger established parties in different ways and they didn't reform or revolutionise very much, and both of their former leaders, once so energetic, are now beaten and sitting at home.
Is the most obvious political lesson to not ever aspire to become the junior partner in a coalition government?
In Vox's case, the rhetoric that has accompanied the rise of the party over the past four years has been an image of strength against those they paint as antagonists in their speeches: strength against the Catalan separatists, strength against the African immigrants, strength against the "cowardly right" (Casado's Popular Party). The strong will save the kingdom and Spaniards against the enemies of the nation, whoever they are and wherever they come from, if possible on horseback smoking cigars and with some epic background music for the Twitter vidoes.
In the real world, first we have all been through the Covid pandemic, now inflation is running at 11% for everyone and this winter promises to very harsh economically for all. Perhaps voters on the right will prefer less polarised, more apparently compentent and realistic hands to govern the country for the next few years.
Vox has framed itself as the real right in this second decade of the 21st Century, and don't forget their voter base began, back in 2014, with the considerable number of PP voters who were not happy with Rajoy on conservative value issues like abortion or the approach to ETA terror victims. Or perhaps we could go back to Rajoy's 2008 speech in Valencia when he said that if conservatives and liberals could leave the party if they wanted too. Now it seems that with Feijóo, and Ayuso in Madrid, and Moreno in Andalusia, that they are showing signs of coming back.
Whatever the historical reference is, the question in 2022 for 2023 is: how can you pretend to be the real, authentic right, strong against the enemies of the nation and the Popular Party, which isn't what it used to be, and at the same time announce, before the great 2023 election contest even begins, that actually we'll get along just fine because the point is to get rid of Pedro Sánchez? Does the right-wing voter not hear those comments and just vote for the Popular Party directly, to give Feijóo a bigger majority to do more conservative government?
I see a big strategic problem here for Vox.
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