Extremadura Was A Warning

Vox is on the march

I messed up posting this yesterday (some holiday cheer may have been involved) and only a handful of people saw it. So, here it is again, and I beg the indulgence of those who have already seen it-

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Stephen Burgen has the details of the election result in Extremadura here. A few extra thoughts.

1.

It’s obviously a disaster for the PSOE but hardly an unexpected one. The party’s regional leader and PM Sánchez’s brother are due to stand trial next May, with the former being accused of inventing a job for the latter. The constant media focus on this must explain part of the collapse of the PSOE’s vote. Never mind that it’s as plain a case of lawfare as you could hope to find. What was important was that it strengthened the link between the name Sánchez and corruption in voters’ minds.

Another factor was probably the PSOE’s increasing difficulties attracting votes in rural Spain where it’s seen as a bunch of urban softies more interested in protecting animals than people.

And a third is that after seven years in power the PSOE is seen as exhausted and corrupt. The end of an era mood is palpable, helped along by most of the national media.

What isn’t true is that the PSOE lost because its guy was a hand-picked sanchista parachuted in from Madrid. Gallardo was very much not Sánchez’s man and had successfully resisted two attempts to remove him by the party’s central organisation.

PM Sánchez acknowledged the defeat in his remarks to the press this morning but his general tone was “Well, shit happens, never mind”. Keeping calm and carrying on has worked well for him over the years. In the next six months we’ll find out about its remaining effective mileage.

2.

Even though it increased its vote and will again lead the regional government, the other big loser yesterday was the PP. It didn’t win big enough to govern alone and the hope that it might be able to do so was the whole reason for calling an early election.

There will now be “negotiations” with Vox to assure its support for the investiture of regional PM Guardiola once more. I used the scare quotes around negotiation because Vox will state its terms and the PP will accept them. That’s how it has worked in all previous regional governments and there’s no reason to think it’ll be any different this time.

The party’s flickering light bulb of a national leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo doesn’t seem to realize that whatever about Sánchez’s future, the bell is definitely tolling for him. Again today he’s pleading for Vox to behave itself and join forces with the PP against the common enemy, the PSOE. Not exactly a winner’s behaviour, and we can expect the party to accelerate its drift to the right to try to staunch the flow of support from it to Vox. But that’s unlikely to work. Voters attracted to Vox’s message (immigrants out, women stay in the kitchen, sexual minorities keep quiet or else, same for regional nationalists) are unlikely to be satisfied with the same ideas lightly sanitised.

Juanma Moreno, the party’s Andalusia chieftain, thinks the Vox wave will break as soon as it spends some time in power and faces up to the messy compromises of governing. That’s a mistake as it assumes that Vox aims to implement its policies. In the long run it does, but for now it mainly wants to break the system, to convince the voters that the liberal democratic order can’t solve their problems, that the PP and PSOE are essentially the same and only it, under Great Leader Santi Abascal, can lead the nation back to greatness.

3.

Vox is cock-a-hoop and well it might be. No one outside his immediate family would recognize their candidate in Extremadura walking down the street and yet it massively increased its vote. People are voting for what they perceive to be the most anti-establishment party brand and right now that’s Vox.

Vox is different. Those who dismiss it as simply the PP with rougher edges are missing the point entirely. It isn’t interested in tweaking policy or shifting the political conversation a few degrees rightward. Its project is revolutionary, not reformist. The party wants to demolish the liberal democratic framework that has governed Spain since the transition, replacing it with something closer to Orbán’s Hungary or worse.

When Abascal talks about national greatness, he means dismantling the autonomous communities, rolling back LGBTQ rights, and establishing an authoritarian state where dissent is considered treasonous.

Many of those voting for it don’t share that ambition, sure. It doesn’t matter; it’s what they’ll get if they continue to do so.

The PP can drift rightward all it wants, but it will never satisfy voters looking for that level of systemic upheaval. Vox’s appeal lies precisely in its promise to burn down the existing order. Anyone thinking this is just more of the same politics needs to wake up.

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