Calviño, electoral partner of Sánchez

More and more people tell me that Nadia Calviño has made the leap into politics and will be number two in the next general elections.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
01 February 2023 Wednesday 23:38
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Calviño, electoral partner of Sánchez

More and more people tell me that Nadia Calviño has made the leap into politics and will be number two in the next general elections. She has logic. The last one has been my good friend José Antonio Martínez Soler, an icon of economic journalism due to the great nose he developed as a director of large media. In his opinion, she is the woman the PSOE needs to recover the social democratic spirit that has somehow been blurred with the alliance that Pedro Sánchez was forced to make to form a government with Podemos and the investiture bloc.

The first vice president has come out in defense of big business in the face of the attacks they have received from her own government. Not only from Ione Belarra to the president of Mercadona, Juan Roig, but also from Pedro Sánchez himself when he stated that if the president of Iberdrola, Ignacio Sánchez Galán and the president of Santander, Ana Botín, were upset with the tax increase that had determined, that meant he was on the right track.

Calviño has asked that the tone be lowered, at the same time that he has stressed the need to unite wills to face the great challenges that Spain has to face. In his opinion, it is essential to sign a multi-year income agreement between the social agents and the Government. That is to say, at all times it shows a moderate and centrist political profile to recover the lost vote of the center-left. This allows us to think that he will form an electoral package with Pedro Sánchez. And that in the hypothetical case that there was a change in the political cycle, that is, that the PSOE lost the elections, Calviño would be a very solid alternative to take over from him.

The truth is that Sánchez has a better poster outside than inside and represents the young social democrats who are trying to establish themselves in the great European institutions. This feeds the hypothesis that after his departure from Moncloa he could follow a path somewhat similar to that of António Guterres, also a socialist, who went from being Prime Minister of Portugal to President of the European Council and ended up as Secretary General of the UN.

But in the short and medium term, Calviño's electoral role could be very relevant in the next general elections that are expected to be held at the end of the year, when the Spanish presidency of the EU ends. He would not only take advantage of the pull that he has among women, but would value the good figures of the Spanish economy, which has managed to avoid a recession. In this way, it would be the contrast that the Socialists need electorally against the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, whose objective is to bring together all the movements to the left of the PSOE, relying on the unions. What makes no sense is that Sánchez fishes electorally in the same pond as Díaz with her Sumar project, since they would neutralize each other. As in soccer, whoever dominates the center wins the match.