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 the unquestionable contributions of Europe to the world after having promoted 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 education system from which no one is left out, health care available to everyone and a guarantee that the elderly receive a pension after long years of work. This has been the pattern that has made Europe the most socially attractive continent in the world.
This is what the generation of Jacques Delors, Helmut Schmidt, François Mitterrand, Helmut Kohl, Olof Palme, Felipe González, Harold Wilson, Shimon Peres and to some extent Angela Merkel believed. The social market economy and solidarity between the richest Europe and the most precarious were the axes that have maintained the balance in a continent that has managed to close the wounds of atrocious wars with a number of direct or indirect victims that it is estimated at more than eighty million Europeans in less than a century.
The crisis that erupted in the United States in 2008 has affected a Europe, enlarged for historical and solidarity reasons, which has not been able to respond to the challenges posed by a loss of economic competitiveness vis-a-vis the Asian giants and by a demographic imbalance that has led to the need labor force from outside and, at the same time, it has given rise to the birth of extreme right-wing parties that have in common the rejection of migrants who risk their lives to reach more dignified life horizons. Suppose that all those who arrived this century left the country in a few months. The social and economic downfall would be enormous.
With this panorama, it is legitimate to ask what efforts politicians are devoting to face the fundamental problems that any impartial analyst detects.
The Nordic social democracies are disfigured. In exemplary Finland the extreme right is in the Government and in Sweden the “Sweden Democrats” support a centre-right coalition from the outside. In Denmark the social democrats rule 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 of 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 the woman for lost. And Pedro Sánchez is already begging for the support of minority parties, some of which wouldn’t even sit down for 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 entails 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 don’t think about the next elections, but about the next generations. The amnesty, the referendum and the requests of the investiture partners have a political logic but they are only tactical moves to get out of the way and ensure a new legislature for Pedro Sánchez. I am not sure that it is what is best for the PSOE or for political stability in Spain.
