Before, during the electoral campaign, there was much nonsense said whilst the remainder of the time they were trying to govern in a more or less fortunate way. Now, when political life is a permanent electoral campaign with hardly no intervals to actually govern, stupidities are said nearly on a everyday basis. The hotchpoch of mutual reproach with which Pedro Sánchez and Pablo Iglesias are starring the public opinion, in a blatant and cruel exercise of disqualifications, will end up costing the left dearly, as not a day goes by without them jumping at each other's jugular seeking to establish how bad the other is.
Iglesias already has the endorsement of his party for not giving support to the investiture if there is no coalition government offer matching the European standards where he himself has some key role. Sanchez, on the other hand, has reached a great consensus, among all the socialist families, around a single idea: no power transfer to give out -just technical positions if any- and new elections that will bring a return. The guru Ivan Redondo is back on stage, with his complex and until now always accurate polls, now predicting that Sanchez's PSOE will not fare worse a new appointment with the polls and that they would even improve on their 123 seats.
But, beyond personal disputes, which, in politics, like elsewhere in life, have their import, what are the major differences between Sanchez and Iglesias that make a coalition government not feasible? When the acting president says "I need a vice-president who does not talk about political prisoners" he uses a mantra with which he is actually threatening Podemos with new elections. Sánchez is actually heeling Iglesias to the marginal left even if, in Spain, not even the former mayor of Madrid Manuela Carmena -this year's Podemos' mayor Ada Colau's guest on Barcelona's patron saint day- not even her speaks of political prisoners. Sánchez, without actually spelling it out, is trying to build a bridge in which the left and anti-independence Spanish voter will feel more comfortable with PSOE than with Podemos. Let's not fool ourselves, this will work in Spain.
And while Sánchez is shooting against Podemos with all the artillery and placing them in an imaginary opposition with the right and ultra right PP, Cs nd Vox, what I see as the real problem for Sánchez not wanting Iglesias in the government, is his economic policy plans. And the narrow margins that the European Commission and the Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs, Pierre Moscovici, are willing to grant Spain. Employment policy will need a twist, public debt will need to continue being reduced and pensions will have to be acted upon, three folders in which the PSOE and Podemos can not come to an agreement. When this happens, Pedro Sánchez will need hands-free and not a crisis of government. And no doubt financial elites will come to his aid pushing PP or Citizens to give him their support. Fancy that employers association CEOE or large companies welcome an electoral repeat when what the establishment always wants is peace and quiet.