by David Mathieson

Labour Uncut? Maybe, but our sister party in Spain, the PSOE has just been sliced, diced and stuck through the democratic mincer. The general election on Sunday put an end to the centre left government in Madrid. It gave the conservative Popular party an overall majority, a rare event in a country used to being governed by coalitions of one sort or another.

These results come on top of some disastrous regional election results for the PSOE earlier this year when voters handed the PP power in almost all of Spain’s powerful autonomous regions. 2011 is without doubt the PSOE’s annus horribilis and will rank amongst the troughs for a party which has had more than its share of bleak moments since it was founded well over a century ago.

For Spaniards and the Euro zone the key question is what happens next? But first a quick post mortem. The numbers were always against a PSOE victory. A rocketing deficit, near doubling of the national debt since the onset of the current crisis, five million unemployed, and eight years in power left the socialist government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero without much in the way of a narrative or alibi. And Zapatero played a poor hand poorly. Until early 2010 he appeared to be in a state of denial about the extent of the problems, insisting that the Spanish economy was fundamentally sound and “playing in the Champeon’s League”. (more…)