Feijóo’s apparent social turn angers the hard wing of the PP

When Alberto Núñez Feijóo said that he was leading a “free project” and “without ties”, the hard wing of the PP had already marked the path along which his opposition strategy should follow more than half a dozen times. When he denied being “a politician of fast-moving politics” or “instant fashion,” his media inspirations had already given him several calls of attention. And when he explained that his purpose was to “unite the Spaniards around a project that “does not point out, does not divide, does not distribute cards for anything and does not exclude anyone,” the ideological factory of FAES had already given him the yellow card a couple of times. of times. Hence so much back and forth, so much twisting of the script and so much fluctuation.

Nothing like improvisation, the absence of the medium term and adaptation to the situation to conquer the headline, but also to lack a fixed course with which to convince locals and strangers. Something that occurs to a large extent in Feijóo’s PP, which more than two years after being proclaimed president of the party still has serious difficulties in strengthening its leadership.

When it’s not Aznar, it’s Esperanza Aguirre, it’s Ayuso, it’s the employers’ association or it’s one of its media references… There is always someone who riots every time they cross some line of the purity of neoliberalism. It has happened again with the apparent social turn with which Feijóo intends to convince the electorate that he did not reach in the last general elections, since this week the so-called hawks of the party have once again become agitated. So much so that a popular leader ironically compares his own party “to the jungle” because “if you are careless, a snake will bite you and you will be out of combat.”

It is understood who, in his opinion, is the serpent and who is the toothed one. And this also explains why Feijóo one day strives to make friends among the best of the European extreme right, as he demonstrated with photography in Rome with Meloni; another compares Pedro Sánchez with the dictator Franco and, in the next, he announces a strategic change to give a social twist to his project and make the umpteenth attempt to place himself at the center of the public agenda.

Nothing. There is no way. The noise has once again changed sides and while the PP barons parade one after another and in good harmony through the Moncloa, distancing themselves from the official line of Genoa, the hum of the hard wing of the party is constant so that Feijóo does not abandon the raca- Because of the amnesty, persist in turning Sánchez into an emulator of Maduro and do not release the narrative of Catalonia’s fiscal independence or the bills paid by the current government to the independence movement.

The first to take the plates out of the pot genovite It has been Esperanza Aguirre, who cannot be said to have any prestige among the bases or the electorate, but she does have a constant media speaker on television talk shows that greatly bothers the national leadership. Thus, while Feijóo was open, for the first time, to sitting down with “social agents” and approaching positions with the coalition government regarding the reduction of the working day, although with the formula of concentrating it in four days (which is not the same ), the former Madrid president was critical and publicly criticized the fact that the PP had decided to “take the flags of the left and defend them” after having conducted some surveys.

“I do not believe in the moral superiority of the left, I believe in that of liberalism,” Aguirre warned before reprimanding the leadership for refusing to fight “the cultural battle” and for listening to what citizens want instead of telling them “what “It is what we believe Spain needs.” Aguirre, like Ayuso, encourages Feijóo to follow the example of Javier Milei and undertake, like the Argentine, a tough crusade to reduce public spending to a minimum without worrying about what they all consider to be the trifle of the Welfare State.

Feijóo’s timid effort to regain initiative in social matters that until now had no weight in his roadmap, as has also been the proposal for a conciliation law, has collided with the most ultra sector, the one led by the president of Madrid , who considers “a mistake to have entered a framework, that of social democracy, that does not interest the conservative voter in the slightest and that, furthermore, can make Vox fat.” Thus, according to popular sources, he would have let Feijóo himself know this week.

Ayuso closely follows the doctrine of his main radio reference, Federico Jiménez Losantos, for whom Feijóo’s new strategy is, in addition to being “suicidal”, an occurrence similar to that of Feijóo when he decided in the convulsive PP congress of 2008 to separate of the anti-nationalist position that María San Gil espoused and moving towards centrism. The hawks liked the housing proposal much more, which consists mainly of lowering taxes, liberalizing land and “eliminating bureaucracy” to build up to 200,000 homes. No limiting prices or limiting purchases by vulture funds as other countries have successfully done to stop the upward trend in prices. After criticism of its conciliation plan, the management returned to the orthodoxy of liberalism with an initiative to protect landlords against “squatting and squatting”, increase the supply of rental housing through tax incentives for owners and eliminate rent caps.

The idea of ​​transversality is an invention that does not go with the ideological right and any initiative that seeks to encourage or insinuate the slightest willingness to dialogue – not just to an agreement – will be reviled and labeled little more than communist, as if Feijóo were suspected of something. that has minimally to do with the left.

Among the barons who orbit outside the Madrid nationalism of the M-30 there is a division of opinions, but the majority think more in terms of their territories where issues such as amnesty do not move a vote than in what the pollsters whisper in Feijóo’s ear. In fact, the general trend of the last two weeks has been to attend Sánchez’s call at the Moncloa to talk about issues that have to do with their regions, also about financing, despite the instruction from Genoa that this should be a matter that was addressed only in the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council.

The Valencian Carlos Mazón even exchanged impressions with Pedro Sánchez about the debt relief of his Community, something that the national leadership had expressly vetoed. He also requested, like López Miras from Murcia, the implementation of a leveling fund for underfinanced autonomous communities, advancing a possible common front also with Andalusia and Castilla-La Mancha, which have below-average resources. Something with which the President of the Government agreed.

In short, between hawks and barons, Feijóo has no one to share his new social score if at this point, of course, it can be said that, in the face of so much zigzagging and so much probing, there is someone capable of deciphering it. Maybe that’s why he has no intention of calling an ordinary congress of the PP, which is where the ideological and programmatic debates of the parties truly take place.