Thursday’s vote showed that the alternative majority is almost impossible and reinforced the sense of interdependence
“This will leave some marks on us, but we are all aware of what is there.” The phrase is from a deputy from En Comú Podem, but it summarizes a general feeling within the so-called investiture bloc. The validation, last Thursday, of the labor reform blew up the majority on which, until now, the Government had relied to carry out its main legislative projects. Neither Esquerra nor EH-Bildu, highly critical of the agreement forged by the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, with unions and businessmen, entered the equation. Neither does the PNV. Everyone, including the Executive, maintains, however, that the episode will not set a precedent.
The way in which the Government finally saw the “most important rule of the legislature” saved (the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, dixit) could explain this conspiracy to rebuild relations. The alternative majority that, with difficulty, the socialists had built under the uncomfortable and resigned gaze of United We Can did not work. If it had not been for the error of the popular deputy Alberto Casero, the rule would have been repealed as a result of the shift of the two UPN deputies who guaranteed an absolute majority of 176 votes against 173. The result, contested by PP and VOX, was finally 175 to 174.
The feeling of having won by the hair, a stroke of luck or, as Bolaños also said, by “divine justice”, is not, despite everything, the key that the Executive insists that its preferred partners will continue to be those who were. What happened on Thursday is just proof of something that each other already assumed: they need each other. And before the vote, both during the plenary debate and afterwards, in informal conversations in the courtyard and the corridors of the Chamber, each other winked in that direction. “This was a very unique rule,” they admitted from the hard core of the Government. “Today is merely circumstantial.”
It was good for the PSOE to stage that it could agree on the left and right in the middle of the electoral campaign in Castilla y León, but it was clear how exceptional the case was
It is true that it was good for the socialists to display a certain ability to reach agreements with “everyone” and more so in the midst of the election campaign in Castilla y León, a conservative territory and little friend of the independence movements. “That – they say in Moncloa – gives you political centrality, which is not the same as if we were in a turn to the center.” It is also true that, in reality, Pedro Sánchez has tried to play that game since the beginning of the legislature, but it was never easy for him.
unrepeatable situation
The labor reform allowed the PSOE to experiment with another majority because it brought together many factors that, they admit, are unlikely to be repeated in other laws. It was the product of an agreement with unions and businessmen and one of the milestones committed to Brussels in exchange for the recovery funds; that and the internal problems of the president of the CEOE made its content non-negotiable with the groups. Unlike the Budgets, moreover, it was a rule piloted by Yolanda Díaz, so United We Can not threaten to derail it by the incorporation of Citizens, and the endorsement of the employers facilitated the entry of both this party and of PdeCAt or UPN.
The episode has increased mistrust in the coalition but also between Podemos and Yolanda Díaz and between her and Esquerra
In the immediate term, there are initiatives such as the repeal of the ‘gag law’, the housing law, the audiovisual law or the ‘only yes is yes’ law, which will be negotiated again with the investiture partners; which does not mean that, as the deputy of ‘En Comú’ pointed out, there have been no “scars”: between the coalition partners, between Podemos and Yolanda Díaz (it was significant that Ione Belarra and Irene Montero were absent from the debate to present her ‘family law’), and between Díaz and ERC, because the supporters of the vice president attribute the position of the Republicans, not to the content of the labor reform, but to the desire to wear it down due to the pull it has among its voters.
Neither Esquerra nor Bildu, however, reproach the PSOE for anything. “They saw that it did not come out and they looked for life,” say the Catalans. With the PNV, on the other hand, the negotiation never ended. At eight o’clock on Thursday morning, Sánchez himself spoke by phone with Andoni Ortuzar. The Socialists, who had their doubts about the fidelity of the UPN deputies, wanted the Basque nationalists inside and assure that there was almost an agreement to guarantee what they were asking for, the prevalence of regional agreements over state ones. “We could not close it – say sources of the negotiation – because everything else would have dropped, starting with Cs.”