Cross no boxes

Unlike Britain, which went to the polls on Thursday, Spain's European and local elections were yesterday. This was my first chance to vote here - I'm ineligible in the General Elections - and we came back from O Grove, a couple of hours' drive away, to do so.

There are of course similarities with Britain - you see election posters all over the place, though not, I've noticed, displayed in people's house windows. Instead the council provides large wooden boards at strategic points around the village onto which all the parties post their campaign posters. What unspoken arrangement exists as to who gets to put theirs at the top, what stops them removing competitors' posters etc., is unclear to me, but they seem to be neatly arranged such that they appear alternately, as if all parties are trying to be polite. (Though I've been told that some naughty types do indeed sneakily remove other parties' posters in the dead of night. Tsk.) Since the local elections mean you're basically voting for somebody you know personally, most of them simply show a slightly awkward-looking local staring directly at the camera, and the party's name and colour.  On a local level, at least, I don't hear people talking about the PSOE, the PP or the BNG so much as 'Pablo', 'Andres' and 'Secundino'.

The local school is the polling station, just as is often the case back home. You go and identify yourself, you're checked against the list, you go into the booth to vote. One vote for European election, one vote for local mayor. There's no crossing of boxes, though - you pick up a slip of paper branded with the party of your choice, insert it into an envelope provided, and drop the sealed envelope into the relevant box. This means that a lot of the election bumph you receive in the mail during the build-up includes envelopes with slips of paper already in them, so you can just take that and drop it in the box if you so wish. Very thoughtful of them!

The count, unlike back home, takes place in the same rooms in which the votes do. Five classrooms were given over to the task, being grouped both regionally and by surnames - so Viana do Bolo, A to F for example. The doors are closed for the count but people gather in the hallways of the school and peer in through open, slatted windows. The envelopes are opened, the name of the party called out, and the score kept on the whiteboards in groups of five. So you can see a running total as the votes are read out. Regular 'shushing' is required to stop chattering spectators making too much noise for the count. The votes are also, of course, counted by observers and checked against each others' scores at the end to make sure they all agree.

A few envelopes contained no slip at all - the local equivalent of writing 'none of the above' on the slip, and one of them contained only a photograph of one of the candidates. Draw your own conclusions - it didn't count. A proportional representation of the votes left the council, as in so many other places, with no overall control. PP - think of them as the Conservatives - came out with four seats, PSOE - Labour equivalent - with three, and BNG - a sort of Galician Plaid Cymru - with four. Negotiations will now have to take place as to who becomes mayor and whether any two - realistically BNG and PSOE - can coalesce. It was extremely interesting to see it done somewhere else, despite a local copper and council member good-naturedly threatening to sling me out of the building because of Brexit. I voted to remain, I reminded them, earning me the right to remain to watch the rest of the 'show'.

Results across Spain, as in much of Europe, served mainly to illustrate increasing polarisation of European politics. Nowhere more though than in Britain. Seeing the results, I can't seriously believe that even committed Leavers find that boorish tosser Farage an appealing politician, but his party served to underline just how much anti-EU sentiment there is in Britain. (Or perhaps it's just an expression of 'Just get it done, for fuck's sake...) The rise of the pro-EU Lib Dems and Greens and Labour's incoherence on their stance, added to huge punishment of the Tories' own inabilities, made Britain's results as divided as anywhere that voted.

I've watched what's been going on in Britain with increasing apprehension, particularly given May's recent resignation. It's not that I think she was capable of doing a decent job of the Brexit negotiations - I defy anybody to navigate the conflicting desires of both sides of that debate with any success - so much as the fear of who might follow her. May at least isn't Boris Johnson, for example. She's been praised by all sides for remaining polite and calm, and I've always had some residual goodwill for her over her stance and work on Hillsborough. People have said she was dealt a bad hand and played it badly. I think she was dealt an impossible hand and played it no less well or badly than anybody else could.

What we may now get is some bug-eyed, foaming-at-the-mouth anti-European determined to pull us out of the EU under any circumstances. (Bloody foreigners! Keep the pound! Close the Chunnel! Ahh, India... If only we hadn't lost you...) The possibility that it may next be Boris to whom this most difficult negotiation is tasked, a man who already has a trail of gaffes, insults, casual racism and rule-breaking behind him, doesn't really bear thinking about. It was fun to watch him dangle from a rope slide waving flags in 2012 and all that, but hasn't his disastrous term as Foreign Secretary already demonstrated that giving him a real job is taking the joke much, much too far?

That the more moderate wing of the Tory party are already warning sternly against leaving with no deal or they may help 'bring down the government', and that such a thing is possible that people like Gove or Hunt almost look preferable to Johnson as next leader, shows just what sort of a shit-storm we're in the middle of.

It's all made last night's election here, which to some is simply about whether the road outside their house is going to finally be repaired or money can be found to employ another doctor locally*, for example, seem like much more of an exercise in real politics, frankly. Being there, seeing the count unfold, knowing the candidates and their seconds and thirds - it was actually fun. Who'd have thought?

*This is of course an over-simplification but it's that sort of stuff that motivates people here and can decide a person's vote.

Implosions

Even a quick look at the political landscape in Britain right now reveals the seismic changes that have already been brought about by last Thursday’s result. I'm a very, very long way from a political expert, so can only say it as I see it, but it all rather suggests that the front each party presents to the electorate has been tissue-paper thin all along. I suspect that would surprise nobody (and could fill an entry all of its own), but it’s nonetheless a bit worrying.

On the one hand, the Tories are going through a leadership election that was always going to happen if the vote went against Cameron. The declared runners at time of writing are few, with likely candidates like Boris Johnson* and Jeremy Hunt announcing they’re not running. but even so - you know it’s grim when you’re looking at the selection and thinking to yourself ‘I hope Theresa May wins’. And she’s been backed by ‘Corrible’ Hunt – I’m sure she’s delighted.

Obviously though, being instinctively a lefty, it’s Labour’s leadership issue which most concerns me. I confess to having felt mixed feelings about Corbyn specifically – it’s not easy to support a man the majority of whose parliamentary party is against him, simply because it makes things easier for the Tories at a time when their own divisions should be being exploited.

That said, ultimately those MPs are (supposedly) elected to represent their constituents, and many of the rank and file Labour Party members who voted for him in large numbers come from those constituencies. So overall, I think the PLP should shut up and get behind a man who has a clear mandate from the membership and would likely win again in the event of any formal leadership challenge. Indeed the Labour Party membership jumped specifically before his election, with many joining so they could vote for him. Those members haven't gone away, as the rising membership of Momentum demonstrates. The Parliamentary Labour Party should not be distancing itself from the very people who put them there, even if they disagree with many of them on the specific issue of the EU. Corbyn’s support of Remain may not have been convincing but he did support it, at least publicly. He did what was right when it mattered – the PLP should do the same.

The biggest concern for me in all of this is who’s likely to exploit any political vacuum caused by the splits on both sides. Usually the centre ground would benefit from such problems, but the Lib Dems are still reaping the whirlwind of their own voters’ ire after they coalesced with the Tories, so that’s not necessarily the case now. That leaves the worrying possibility that more extreme parties, of whatever persuasion, stand to gain from the chaos. Imagine a general election where the Tory vote is split or lowered because they’ve lost the support of Remain voters in London and elsewhere, the Labour party has split in two, dividing their votes with them, and nobody wants to vote Lib Dem. What you’ve possibly got then is a very low turnout and UKIP and others improving their share of the vote dramatically.

That doesn’t bear thinking about, but the referendum result has generated such turmoil in politics in Britain right now that it’s the kind of hypothetical scenario that we have to.

*Has it all got a bit real for Boris, such that he suddenly doesn’t want anything to do with it? He and Gove looked like rabbits in headlights in the direct aftermath of the Leave victory, and it’s since become clear that they’d done not an iota of planning between them for such a result.

Industrial action by doctors shows just how many the government is pissing off

The last time doctors took industrial action was during the mid-seventies. Well paid, well respected generally, they're not exactly the most militant group, but have voted overwhelmingly to strike for all but emergency activity on June 21st, with possible further action to follow.

Given how well paid they are, and the comfort in which most of them can expect to retire, and given the people who are likely to suffer as a result of their action, they can expect little sympathy from Joe Public. On that, my personal feeling is that they work hard, carry a heavy burden not to make mistakes because of the possible consequences of them, and are merely paid what all members of our health services are actually worth. I'd far rather bump the pay of nurses, junior doctors etc up at the expense of hugely paid businessmen, but that's another story.

Anyway, this is mainly noteworthy because, as white collar, middle-class, high-earning people, these are the last sort of voters the Tories should be looking to piss off. Lately, when there's been a Conservative government (which is how I view this one, regardless of the fact it's supposed to be a coalition), there have been more strikes among those sectors of work which are run by the more left-wing unions than there are when Labour are in power. What you might call traditionally working-class sectors are those who usually come into conflict with Tory ideology.

But here we have a disaffected group who come from what may reasonably be expected to be drawn from the Tory vote. In attacking pensions so broadly, and so deeply, they're infuriating people well outside the usual gamut of the disaffected. So we can now, to a list which already includes public sector workers, miners, nurses, fire fighters, transport workers and even the police (who, let's not forget, openly booed Theresa May at their conference), add doctors to this growing list of those they've angered.

At this rate, you've got to wonder who's going to be left supporting them when the next election comes round. There will, of course, be the usual tax cuts in the last pre-election budget, but is that going to be enough this time round to carry their sorry arses back in? In cutting everything so dogmatically, are they busy cutting their own electoral throats at the same time?

The truth will out. Eventually.

I've written on here before that, for Joe Public at least, there is no power but the vote. Happily, today showed that this is no longer necessarily true, thanks to the power of the internet. As much as it may be used to look at pictures your gran would disapprove of, try to scam innocent people out of money, sell complete tat or waste time by laying out the minutiae of one's life in Proustian detail to an uninterested public, it can also be capable of catalysing great things.

The Commons website which allows people to set up favoured issues which they'd like to see debated, and which, should they pass 100,000 signatures in support, is instrumental in getting those issued debated in Parliament, allowed the reopening of the Hillsborough Stadium disaster debate.

Today, after 22 years of campaigning by the families of the 96 innocents who lost their lives, Theresa May stood in Parliament and promised full disclosure to the Hillsborough Independent Panel of all the documents relating to Cabinet discussion of the disaster in its aftermath. That disclosure should reveal the full truth of the causes, the reaction of police and fans, and the scandalous, shocking rubbing of salt into gaping wounds by a press intent on demonising those supporters, those victims. The families will, hopefully, finally get the full story and have their dead loved ones (and all the other Liverpool supporters there) fully vindicated, as they indeed were by the Taylor Report.

Over 139,000 people signed this particular petition in a short space of time, giving sharp focus to the strength of feeling that's still there, and the number of people to whom this was important. As an example of power, some power at any rate, being put back into the hands of the people, this was outstanding. It also allowed Parliament to show that it hasn't completely forgotten that it's there to serve the electorate, not the other way round, and that it can act as one and do the right thing.

A more comprehensive run-down of the debate can be found here. One poster rightly says that it's a shame that more MPs couldn't be bothered to turn up for a debate which was so important to the public, but I suspect many of them knew that which way it was going. Had there been continued resistance from the Government I'm pretty sure there would have been a lot more there. And the families of many of the dead were in the public gallery to see this important step towards justice for the 96. All in all, a good day for British justice and democracy, I reckon, and it ain't too often you can say that.