Reasons for a vote of no confidence in Rajoy

The escalation of the Catalan crisis has allowed Rajoy to pretend he is less isolated than he appears: everyone except Podemos opposes Catalonia’s self-determination

Josep Ramoneda
3 min
Mariano Rajoy mirant el rellotge durant la moció de censura presentada per Podem, exposada en un discurs de més de dues hores.

FAILURE. The headlines were already written; the name-calling ahead of the vote of no confidence was so widespread that its failure was taken as read. The motion was bound to fail since Pablo Iglesias lacks the sufficient support to be prime minister. However, this is not the only measure of success: if it served to relaunch the Podemos project, give it a boost just when it is showing signs of weakness, it would be justified in the eyes of those who called the vote. Podemos was motivated to act as after seeing the vacuum that has existed in the socialist space since last November. Having taken it for granted that Susana Díaz would emerge victorious in the PSOE’s primaries, Podemos jumped the gun, thinking it was time for them to attain hegemonic control of the left. It was a motion aimed at the PSOE, with Rajoy as an excuse. But when the time came for the vote, Pedro Sánchez had made a comeback. And PSOE is experiencing a modest revival, though it remains to be seen how it will play out eventually. Meanwhile, the escalation of the Catalan crisis allows Rajoy to pretend that he is less isolated than he appears: everyone except Podemos is on his side against Catalonia’s self-determination. In fact, the unanimity of the vote against the motion could allow Podemos to turn an error into an opportunity, provided it can build a critical position and present a project that is not simply meant to flatter their traditional voters. And if their vote were not defeated by an overall majority in parliament, Rajoy would have little to boast about.

2. REASONS. There are many reasons to bring a vote of no confidence against Rajoy. Opinion polls have shown that the PP has been in a slow but steady decline for some time now. The main reason is its systematic refusal to take responsibility. Corruption has become the number two preoccupation for the public, after unemployment. And Rajoy, the prime minister and president of the political party with endemic corruption, remains in office, as if it’s nothing to do with him. He has simply been decapitating individuals in whom he had expressed his complete confidence up until the very day before their dismissal. But it is not only in this field that responsibility is foreign to Rajoy’s working culture. The Constitutional Court recently overturned the tax amnesty introduced in 2012, with a harsh ruling on the government’s neglect of duty concerning tax legislation and management. Yet the prime minister and the finance minister remain in their posts.

Such an attitude has given rise to all the other reasons for the vote of no confidence: an economist’s view of politics, which has caused Rajoy to tiptoe around the enormous chasms opened up by his austerity policies. A sheer lack of empathy. Viewing the world with the aid of macroeconomic figures, he is unable to see the reality of what the generational divide and precariousness as a way of life really mean. It is a government which is unable to look its citizens in the eye. With this inability to listen, problems stagnate: in five years Rajoy has been unable to provide a political response to the Catalan issue, to move on from a continual ‘no, no and no’. And if that were not enough, its international policies prolong the principles of the Aznar administration. Spain as a servant of US interests in Europe, even at the cost of splitting the European Union, as happened during the Iraq War. We have seen this before: from the outset Rajoy has avoided conflict with Trump and has tiptoed around America’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. It must be said that climate change denial is also part of the Aznar legacy. All these attitudes come down to one thing: a disregard for politics. The resigned acceptance of the dependent nature of politics, the refusal to imbue political action with ideas and a sense of direction. For Rajoy, to govern is to survive. For him, a depoliticized populace is ideal.

There is no shortage of reasons for a vote of no confidence. However, it’s another thing altogether for Podemos, from their solitary position, to turn what has previously been declared a failure into a success in the eyes of the public. For a vote of no confidence to be genuinely useful, it calls for the relationships within the forces of the left to be clarified and that the socialists and Podemos’ supporters find a way to understand each other and overcome the psychopathology resulting from being ideological neighbours.

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