Ángel Collado
With People’s Party closing ranks, the full house in the Valencia bullring and Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s proclamation of loyalty, Pablo Casado has pulled through the PP convention. In the internal order he comes out reinforced, before the public opinion the polls of this autumn will have to rule. But due to the disappointment of the more governmental press, which examines him for centrism at every turn, and the disdain of the extreme right, the party leadership considers the success of the event as an image offensive to be confirmed.
The national convention, the usual formula for the Popular Party to get its head out of the sand when there is no national congress, was devised on this occasion after the disaster of the Catalan elections held last February. The constitutionalist centre-right had collapsed in Catalonia, the victim of its division, aggravated this time by the emergence of Vox, leaving the PP in second-to-last place. Casado’s team was faltering and discouragement spread throughout the party. At the Genoa headquarters they decided to call a party event open to society to renew ideas with the ultimate goal of gaining time and shoring up their president.
But it was Pedro Sánchez who then made the main opposition party react when he tried to wrest power from the regional government by means of motions of censure in Murcia, Castilla y León and Madrid. Failure changed sides. Isabel Díaz Ayuso brought the elections forward to May, swept away the left in the autonomous region, absorbed Ciudadanos, stopped Vox and became the new figurehead of the PP.
At the itinerant convention and with guest stars such as Mario Vargas Llosa, or at his worst, Nicolás Sarkozy, Casado scored the goal for internal consumption of Mariano Rajoy and José María Aznar pointing him out as the future president of the Government. But both former heads of government are the past and Ayuso the present of a new triumphant PP. The interest of the convention focused on whether or not the president of the Community of Madrid, on an announced trip to the United States, would arrive on time for the event, and whether or not she would join in the chorus of praise for the leader.
Ayuso’s speech, together with the rest of the regional presidents and with the same script of confidence in Casado, had the added bonus of assuring that she is staying in Madrid, from where she has brought about the greatest defeat of Sanchismo and the abandonment of Pablo Iglesias’s political life, although this time its leader did not want to remember it.
Her speech was a relief for the party leadership after a summer of nerves and jealousy towards the new ‘leaderess’ who demands control of the Madrid PP organisation, just as Alberto Núñez Feijóo has control of Galicia and the rest of the party’s regional presidents have control of the corresponding region.
Ayuso proclaimed her support and loyalty to Casado when any ambiguity on the issue would have sounded like a candidacy for the succession of the party president in the medium term. Ayuso and Casado get along on a personal level rather better than their respective teams, and their immediate plans intersect and feed back into each other between now and the next general elections.
The national president of the PP has to call for next summer, not a filler convention like the one closed in Valencia at the weekend, but an entire national congress with projects and a renewed leadership with which to face the end of the legislature and the next appointment before the polls. It will be their third and last chance to come to power. Just as now everything is closing ranks and no one in the PP is questioning Casado’s leadership or considering his replacement, it is also admitted that he has that expiry date: the next elections.
Isabel Díaz Ayuso will first have her particular fixed electoral exam in May 2023, in the elections scheduled for the autonomous regions. If by then she reconfirms herself as ‘leader’ of the PP in Madrid with another clear majority, she will contribute to the erosion of Sánchez’s government to the benefit of Casado’s expectations. For the time being, Ayuso can wait.
