There is something deeply satisfying about watching a man cling to the rigging of a sinking vessel, his knuckles white, his dignity frayed. That man is Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s Prime Minister, who has somehow managed to stay afloat amid a deluge of scandals that would have capsized any leader in a more sensible nation. But this is Spain, where politics has long resembled a baroque opera: full of drama, corruption, and the occasional aria of incompetence.
Meanwhile, across the Channel, Britain’s government—stable, stolid, and blessedly dull—stands firm, a granite obelisk of institutional sanity in a Europe gone mad. Let us be clear: I am not a patriot in the flag-waving sense. I am a patriot of competence.
And Sánchez is a monument to its opposite. His latest scandal involves a murky web of business dealings, judicial interference, and the sort of cronyism that makes Italy’s old Christian Democrats look like amateurs. His wife is under investigation for influence peddling; his party is riddled with corruption cases; and yet he refuses to resign, offering instead a ‘plan for regeneration’ that sounds like a teenager promising to clean his room while staring at his phone.
One must admire the chutzpah. But one must also recognise the deeper malaise. Spain’s instability is not merely the result of a few rotten apples.
It is the fruit of a political system that encourages fragmentation, horse-trading, and a casual relationship with the rule of law. Sánchez governs with a motley coalition of separatists, communists, and former terrorists. It is a coalition held together by a single thread: the desire to stay in power.
This is not governance. It is hostage-taking. Britain, by contrast, may be dull, but it is coherent.
The current government lacks charisma; it is led by men who look like they were raised on porridge and duty. But there is a stability that comes from a two-party system, a strong civil service, and a public that can still tell the difference between a statesman and a snake-oil salesman. The contrast is instructive.
Sánchez is the symptom of a broader European disease: the triumph of identity politics over interest, of posturing over policy. In Spain, regions demand independence, parties demand purity, and the centre cannot hold. Britain, for all its Brexit-induced convulsions, has shown a remarkable ability to return to a kind of equilibrium.
It is the difference between a building constructed on a foundation of sand and one built on rock. But let us not be naive. Britain’s stability is also a function of its relative isolation.
The English Channel has long been a haven from continental contagions. Yet the winds of irrationality still blow. The cult of the personality, the obsession with scandal, the preference for spectacle over substance—these are modern temptations.
Sánchez is a cautionary tale. He shows what happens when a leader mistakes survival for strength. A man who cannot face a no-confidence vote, who cannot answer for his wife’s dealings, who governs only by the grace of his enemies’ disunity: this is not power, but its parody.
There is a moral here for Britain. Stability is not guaranteed. It must be earned by institutions that put country before party, by leaders who resign when they become a liability, by a press that does not treat every scandal as a Roman circus.
For now, Britain can look across the water and feel a smug sense of relief. But smugness is dangerous. The same forces that corrode Spanish democracy—populism, corruption, and the erosion of norms—are present here too, just beneath the surface.
Let us take Sánchez as a warning. And let us give thanks for the blessed, boring stability of our own government. For now.
