Spain is Going Pear Shaped

In response to the election result the representatives of the center-left Socialist Party met with the Mariano Rajoy of the right-wing Peoples Party, but only to tell him to piss off:

The arduous task of assembling a new government for Spain got off to a bad start on Wednesday after the leader of the Socialist party flatly ruled out any deal with the Popular party of prime minister Mariano Rajoy.

Pedro Sánchez, the leader of the Socialists, held a brief meeting with Mr Rajoy in the prime ministerial compound outside Madrid — but apparently only to reiterate his opposition to any accord.

“We will vote against the Popular party and against Mariano Rajoy as prime minister. Voters have asked for change,” he told a news conference after the meeting.

The meeting was the first encounter between two party leaders since the inconclusive general election last Sunday. Spanish voters delivered a deeply fragmented parliament in which the two mainstream parties — the centre-right PP and the centre-left Socialists (PSOE) — will have a much-reduced presence.

The PP will be the strongest bloc in parliament once again, but it remains 53 seats shy of an absolute majority in the 350-seat chamber. The Socialists will be a distant second, followed by the upstart anti-austerity Podemos movement.

A second new entrant is the centrist Ciudadanos party, whose 40 deputies will make a useful addition to any alliance but are not enough to hand a majority to the PP on their own.

Much like in Greece, and Portugal, the two mainstream parties have been following a consensus that is opposed what appears to be a majority of the electorate, which has the electorate moving far right and far left.

Unfortunately, the response of Brussels to this trend is to become even more opaque and undemocratic.

It is a recipe for disaster.