Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez visited Keir Starmer in Downing Street this week, the first bilateral meeting between arguably the only centre-left leaders left in Europe. Formally, they were finalising Gibraltar’s long-awaited Brexit deal, but Starmer, fresh from reshuffling his stuttering government again this week, might have learned a thing or two from Sánchez.
That’s not to say that Sanchismo should be a manual. What, you may wonder, could Starmer learn from a leader caught up in corruption allegations and beholden to Catalan separatists? Unemployment rates remain high in Spain. Wages are low. A lack of intervention in the housing market has been the major failing of the Sánchez government. But consider the most pressing issues in Starmer’s in-tray: the economy, immigration, and a surging far-right. Where Britain dreams of growth, Spain has been the fastest-growing major economy in Europe – 3.2 per cent last year compared with Britain’s 1.1 per cent. Remarkably, The Economist crowned Spain the best-performing big economy in the world despite being governed by a left-wing coalition with Communist party members in the cabinet.
So, how did they do it? Was it by taking “tough decisions” and balancing the books on the backs of pensioners? Not quite. European funds help, of course, but Spain has achieved this largely from the soft-left. Sánchez argues for welfare and public investment. The minimum wage has increased by half. His government is interventionist and has discounted public transport tickets and utility bills during periods of inflation. It has created emergency wealth taxes and is in the process of cutting the working week. And all this by a government in crisis for much of its two terms – what would Sánchez do with a majority as commanding as Starmer’s?
Spain has been a left-wing outrider internationally too, recognising a Palestinian state well before the rest of Europe came to the same conclusion. Sánchez is unafraid to use the language of genocide. Spain refuses to entertain Trump’s calls for 5 per cent defence spending and pushes the sort of progressive realist foreign policy that David Lammy pays lip service to.
Sánchez is the only European leader to make the case for immigration, linking it to growth and levelling with the electorate that demographic trends mean Spain will need millions more workers in the future. “Welcoming the outsider is not only a duty,” Sánchez said last year, “but a step towards guaranteeing the welfare state.” Asylum hotels and small boats are a problem here too – Spain had more than 60,000 migrants arrive by sea in 2024 – but Sánchez refuses to let illegal immigration overshadow the wider migration debate. Instead of parroting talking points to pacify the right, he takes them on, knowing they would have never voted for him anyway.
For Starmer, not being Corbyn and not being the Conservatives is not enough. Shake up the comms team all you like: is the problem communication or the lack of a coherent message to communicate in the first place? Starmer will never have Sánchez’s political skills or telegenic suavity, but he would do well to borrow some of his boldness and sense of urgency. In 2023, Sánchez called a snap election the day after his Socialists were wiped out in regional polls and managed to cobble a coalition together, keeping the far-right at bay.
Love him or loathe him, Sánchez isn’t afraid of taking risks or making mistakes. He has a narrative, selling Spaniards the story of his government. He faces up to the far-right Vox, something that wins him begrudging support from far-left and separatist parties who prop up his government because they know he is the only man who can hold them off.
Sánchez has the worldview, confidence and communication skills to coalesce a broad left-wing coalition, however flawed and however fragile. Starmer ventriloquises rhetoric picked up in vox pops and red wall focus groups while falling further behind in the polls. These are populist times. Electorates are capricious. Technocratic tinkering within a right-wing, press-approved framework won’t cut it in an online age of Farage, Corbyn, and now Zack Polanski.
Millions in Spain detest Sanchismo, but nobody in Britain knows what Starmerism is. Sánchez understands that left-wing leaders cannot please everyone, while Starmer pleases nobody.
