Everyone is talking about left unity, but they are also preparing for the distribution of blame

The threat of divorce in a couple becomes an imminent danger when each party begins to explain to whoever will listen that it is the other’s fault. He doesn’t want it to happen, it would be terrible, especially for children, but this is what it is. I have done what I could and I cannot do more. The day after the act at the Magariños sports center in which Yolanda Díaz presented her candidacy to lead a dozen left-wing parties at the polls, she had the alarming appearance of the prologue to the final break between Podemos and Sumar.

Faced with the uncertainty of recent months, few are already hiding in the calendar. It is time to build the argument that will be repeated in the coming months, at least until the May elections. In their press conference on Mondays, the spokespersons for Podemos stated that unity between the two formations is “essential and essential.” A scenario in which it does not come true cannot even be imagined: “Not going to the elections together would be bad news. It would be a failure,” said Pablo Fernández.

The desire may be sincere, but it must not be forgotten that it was Podemos who decided not to attend the unitary act in favor of the candidate that the party itself had exalted two years ago. They did not do so because they had required a prior commitment to the open primary as a condition of accepting the offer of a front row seat.

Yolanda Díaz surprised with an interview in El País with which she wanted to free herself from the start of any plot framework in which Podemos wants to move. She was asked if she believed that “a Sumar without Podemos would be a failure.” In other responses, she temporized or preferred not to respond. Not in this one: “It would not be a failure at all. Citizen movements are decided by the people, and I know that Sumar is going to be the revulsion of Spanish politics at this time. I have it very clear”.

Ergo, Sumar does not need Podemos. A strategic or tactical point of view? If he answers that it would be a failure, he would be giving Podemos the key to measure the success of Sumar. And he has no intention of doing that.

It is difficult to convince Díaz that he must concede in order for this or any other party to join his lists. He moves in a discourse in which the parties are expendable or even a minimally necessary nuisance on his platform. “It will be a very light tool, a meeting place directed towards the future and hope. The parties that join have to be there, but they don’t have to be the soul of Sumar. The soul is the people, ”he says in that interview.

It is another chapter of a rhetoric with which the left has felt very comfortable since 2014 as a laboratory of ideas that questions the value of political parties as essential tools of democracy. “Politics has failed the citizens, not the other way around,” says Díaz in a phrase that was heard a lot in the squares in the 15M.

There is a credibility problem in that, because a vice president of the Government says it, someone who has been at the center of power since 2019. How does that fit with the defense of what the Government and the Díaz Ministry itself have done? If it is true that the policy has failed the people, how can it be said that the labor reform has benefited the workers? If the latter is so, there will be those who think that the parties and parliamentary groups have been used for very important things in this legislature.

A “very light” tool that will support a very powerful leader who aspires to nothing less than to preside over the Government. Fortunately, politics has nothing to do with engineering.

Those who have criticized Díaz’s position most harshly in Podemos have been those who are not in the governing bodies. “We can continue to be the great ideological actor of the left in Spain,” said Pablo Iglesias in RAC1 to demand a leading role for his party. The day before, Juan Carlos Monedero accused Yolanda Díaz of collaborating with the opponents of Podemos: “She is the minister of United We Can and today he has campaigned for parties that compete against United We Can. That is noise. Thunderous”.

Ione Belarra limited herself to post a tweet linking to a message from the Podemos account with the spokespersons’ press conference. This Tuesday he will give an interview on RNE.

In the case of the left, it is not unusual for everyone to be interested in remembering events of the recent past. Alberto Garzón replied with a thread of 19 tweets (less than ten is considered defeatism). Faced with those who maintain that we are facing a political-media plot to destroy Podemos -some presented as evidence the covers of ABC and The world-, the coordinator of Izquierda Unida recalled that the same thing was said nine years ago when the party changed the hierarchies of the left not long after its foundation. At that time, the victim was IU.

When Podemos emerged in 2014, there was a part of the left, explains Garzón, who “chose to resort to this simple idea: ‘Podemos arose because it benefits the system.'” The presence of its leaders in private television gatherings was justified for that reason. Now some say the same in relation to Sumar: “Since he is ‘well treated’ by the media, that is ‘inevitably’ proof that the ‘system’ benefits from it or, worse, that it is behind it”, alleges the minister, an attitude that he considers as ridiculous as the one he heard years ago on IU.

It was in 2016 when Cayo Lara, then leader of the IU, wrote an article to accuse Podemos of launching “a hostile takeover bid” against them. He also said that the media was closing in on IU: “Communication mats were laid to another force that conveniently took advantage of them and that entered us from the left to overtake us from the right”.

To try to alleviate the impact of her interview in El País, Yolanda Díaz explained a few hours later in La Cafetera that although it is “perfectly possible” that Podemos is not on her platform, what she wants is something else: “I would like them to be. I have already said it all these days and I also believe that there is no reason not to be there ”.

The eight months remaining until the general elections are going to be very long on the left.