Six months on from the Spanish general election and it seems Iraq still dominates any prospective relationship between the new Socialist government in Madrid and the Labour government in London. A decade ago things were very different. Europe’s social democratic leaders were embraced by Labour. Similarities between Gerhard Schroeder’s Neue Mitte and France’s more muted new republicanism were embraced as signs of a social democratic wave flowing through Europe. Today however, such considerations are tempered by the war on terror. Zapatero has not received the Schroeder treatment. Joint policy declarations aren’t exactly abound and Blair and Zapatero have only met twice. Indeed, Zapatero has arguably become closer to Schroeder’s Germany and ironically Jaques Chirac’s France, both in terms of the war on terror and more broadly on issues such as European harmonisation.
But should the war on Iraq really monopolise the analysis of the current and future Anglo-Iberian relationship? Dip underneath the glaring foreign policy disagreements and you begin to see a growth rather than decline in the similarities between London and Madrid.
First, the tensions over Iraq needs to be qualified. Zapatero has indeed completed the withdrawal of all Spanish combat troops from the ground in Iraq but that is by no means the end to Spanish involvement in the reconstruction of the country. In a post-election interview with El Pais newspaper, the new Foreign Secretary, Miguel Angel Moratinos, was at pains to highlight the fact that Spanish humanitarian, infrastructure and economic support in Iraq will remain unchanged, ‘We’re not washing our hands’ of the Iraq situation, Moratinos said. And this rhetoric underlines the fact that Madrid is still far more involved in the rehabilitation of war-torn Iraq, than either Paris or Berlin who both still show little appetite for allocating government support to the country. In years to come when dealing with the fallout of Iraq, Blair may find that Spain, once again, becomes his closest ally in Europe.
Further inspection of Zapatero’s wider Middle Eastern policy will also give Downing Street encouragement. His first foreign trip was not to London, Paris or even Washington but Rabat. Zapatero’s predecessor José María Aznar reduced Spain’s post-Franco relations with Morocco to an all time low. Zapatero immediately set about remedying this. His olive branch to Morocco, several of whose citizens are accused of the Madrid bombings, shows that Zapatero wants to tackle the causes of terrorism. Zapatero, as Robin Cook’s former special advisor David Mathieson has put it, wants to ‘draw in’ countries around the Mediterranean, namely North African and Arab states, to dialogue. Blair and the Labour government may see such policies as a chance for the government to reintroduce itself to European diplomatic efforts. And the fact that the UK government has pledged to put Barcelona (the 1995 conference that signaled the creation of the Euro-Med idea) on the agenda when they take over the presidency of the EU next year is a sign that this could be the case.
For Mathieson, author of the new Foreign Policy Centre paper Blair’s Doppelganger: Zapatero and the New Spanish Left, Blair and Zapatero’s potential for a successful relationship is most apparent when domestic policy is taken into account. In Britain his stance on Iraq has made many see Zapatero as an unreconstructed leftist but in fact he is very much a social democrat in the mould of Blair. His Socialist party may not have had the cosmetic re-branding of New Labour but Zapatero, both in opposition and now in government has taken his party from a sometimes fractured socialist coalition to a progressive social democratic party.
His willingness to look to the centre and beyond is no better illustrated than with his stance on the economy. Indeed for the PSOE in 2004 you simply need to read New Labour 1997. Equality may be the goal but as with New Labour, the PSOE sees macroeconomic stability as their prerogative. To this end it’s been a fiscally austere start for Zapatero, with a Brown-esque freeze on taxes and, as Mathieson highlights, Zapatero will tolerate deficits over the course of the cycle only to finance investment.
Furthermore the man Zapatero has hired to handle the Spanish economy is not too far ideologically from his British counterpart in the Treasury. Pedro Solbes, like Gordon Brown values market confidence and economic responsibility above traditional leftist financial priorities. Interestingly, unlike the issue of Iraq, Solbes’ position in the government may potentially prove to divide rather than unite the currently harmonious relationship between Spain, France and Germany, especially if the former continues to save whilst her neighbours continue to spend.
Other parallels arise from the belief both in Madrid and London on the need for supply-side reforms in order to make the European economy more competitive. Again, this is an area where Britain and Spain may be more progressive than in France and Germany where such ideas are accepted by the respective governments but are being seriously hindered by public hostility. As with Blair in the UK who was able to come in after the bulk of labour market reform had been implemented by Thatcher, Zapatero too can profit from some of the reforms brought in by Aznar, although Aznar’s second and final term in office was defined by his decision to shy away from radical labour market reform, instead concentrating on reconciling the separatist claims of the country’s disparate regions and cementing the country’s place in international affairs. At present however, whilst they may be coming from different angles, with different problems to confront, New Labour and the PSOE are potentially close friends when it comes to both domestic and European economic policy.
On public policy, Zapatero also shows signs of being in the New Labour mould although an all out move towards New Labour is not on the cards at present. Spaniards, or at least those that voted for Zapatero and the left, are still sceptical of the adoption of Clintonian welfarism and Zapatero will have to remedy the country’s cultural predisposition for a statist approach to welfare.
Overall, like everything at present in Labour party politics, London’s relationship with Spain is unjustly defined by goings-on in Iraq. The divergence of opinion regarding the middle east, the relationship with the US and, to a far lesser extent, the future of Europe all represent difficult stumbling blocks for any Anglo-Iberian cooperation. As leaders of modern European democratic parties, however, Zapatero and Blair may discover more common ideological ground than they – or the commentators – first assumed.