Politics is not the result of mathematics, but a network of consensus and agreements that make progress and coexistence possible in a democratic society. One of Europe’s unquestionable contributions to the world after having incubated two bloody world wars in the last century is the welfare state. Thanks to the pacts between conservatives and social democrats, a story has been built about the equitable distribution of wealth, an educational system from which no one is left out, healthcare within everyone’s reach and a guarantee that the elderly receive a pension after long years of work.
This is what the generation of Jacques Delors, Helmut Schmidt, François Mitterrand, Helmut Kohl, Olof Palme, Felipe González, Harold Wilson, Shimon Peres and to a certain extent Angela Merkel believed. The social market economy and solidarity between the richest and most precarious Europe were the axes that have maintained balance in a continent that has managed to heal the wounds of atrocious wars, whose number of direct or indirect victims is estimated at more than eighty million Europeans in less than a century.
The crisis that broke out in 2008 in the United States has affected a Europe, expanded for historical reasons and solidarity, which has not been able to respond to the challenges posed by a loss of economic competitiveness compared to the Asian giants. And due to a demographic imbalance that has led to the need for labor from abroad and, at the same time, has given rise to the birth of extreme right-wing parties, which have in common the rejection of migrants who risk their lives to achieve life horizons. more worthy. Suppose that all those who have arrived in this century left the country in a few months. The social and economic disaster would be enormous.
Given this panorama, it is legitimate to ask what politicians dedicate their efforts to confront the underlying problems that any impartial analyst detects.
The Nordic social democracies are disfigured. In the model Finland the extreme right is in the Government and in Sweden the “Sweden Democrats” support a center-right coalition from outside. In Denmark, the Social Democrats govern with the Liberals and Moderates. The Netherlands will hold early elections in a few weeks. The common debate in these countries is immigration and the fear of losing one’s identity, the fear of the other and the culture they bring.
Brexit, a mistake according to all British polls, is part of this supremacist tendency to feel superior to others. I don’t know what will happen with the two investitures that will take place in Spain in the coming months. Núñez Feijóo considers it lost. And Pedro Sánchez is already begging for support from minority parties, some of which would not even sit down to have a coffee.
This cannot turn out well and the lesser evil, in my opinion, is the holding of new elections or a State pact that involves the reform of the Constitution, with the participation of all the political, social and economic forces that seek great agreements. on several basic issues and, above all, that they do not think about the next elections, but about the following generations. The amnesty, the referendum and the requests of the investiture partners have a political logic, but they are only solutions to get by and ensure another term for Pedro Sánchez. I am not sure that it is what is best for the PSOE or for political stability in Spain.
