Tim Black explains how the new Spanish leader got there without ever winning an election:
There is a big, fat, blindingly obvious problem with Spain’s new prime minister, Pedro Sánchez: no one voted for him, or indeed the Socialist Party (PSOE) of which he is leader.
In fact, 46-year-old Sánchez has never been overly familiar with the electorate. He entered congress in 2009 as an internal Socialist Party replacement because a lawmaker was leaving his seat early. He then promptly lost this seat in the 2011 General Election. Fortunately, in 2013, another Socialist congressional deputy left her seat early, meaning that Sánchez could once more return to the political fray, bypassing the electorate en route. Improbably, he was successfully nominated, thanks to the backing of PSOE grandees, as the Socialists’ general secretary in 2014, leading them to their worst-ever result in the 2015 General Elections. A few months later, the PSOE got rid of him as leader, and Sánchez, in turn, rid himself of congressional responsibilities by quitting his seat. His reason, it seems, was to have time to concentrate on becoming the PSOE leader again. Which is what happened.
His triumph this past week, therefore, was not built on anything resembling popular support. Rather, it was a feat of constitutional chutzpah. It began last week, when the corruption scandal that has long dogged Mariano Rajoy, then prime minister, and leader of the governing Popular Party, came to a momentary head (the so-called ‘Gurtel’ case is ongoing), with the jailing of one of the PP’s former treasurers for 33 years for fraud and money-laundering. The PP was itself also fined for benefitting from the kickbacks for public contracts. Sánchez saw his chance, and proposed a motion of no confidence in Rajoy, a move that under Spanish constitutional law results, if successful, in the replacement of the subject of the motion by the proposer. Congress duly passed the motion and that was that – for the first time in Spanish political history, a sitting prime minister was deposed through a vote of no confidence. Sánchez, with the Socialists in tow, had ascended to power.
But that big, fat fly in the ointment of Sánchez and the Socialists’ success won’t go away. For a start, you can see the absence of any public mandate writ large in the congressional maths. As it stands (following the 2015 General Election), Rajoy’s PP remains the largest single party, with 134 members of the 350-strong Congress of Deputies, while Sánchez and the now ruling socialists have only 84. To be able to govern without going to the electorate, Sánchez will have to strike deals with the seven other parties and regional representatives, including, of course, Catalonia’s independence-demanding cohort. Which means concessions, deals, compromises, all rich in cynicicsm and opportunism.
