Ordinary Gweilo

Simon mentions the general election in Spain and the reaction to the results. It was certainly a surprise, and the right-wing bloggers are horrified that the terrorist bombings in Madrid may have influenced the result and could do so again.

As Simon says, one of the features of democracy is that it sometimes throws up unexpected results, and in recent times these have normally taken the form of right-wing parties doing surprisingly well (notably in Switzerland, Austria, and of course in the French Presidential Election). Also, the result of the British general election in 1992 was a big surprise to most people – the opposition Labour Party looked to be heading for victory but the Tories held on to power.

I prefer to believe that people do think carefully about how to vote, and that sometimes it is a very close call. In 1992, people who wanted to vote Labour were worried that they would increase taxes and damage the economy (and the Labour Party took that message onboard and came back to win a resounding victory in 1997). Many people who voted for extreme right-wing parties in Europe did so out of frustration and to send a message to the mainstream politicians.

By the same token, is it any surprise that the people of Spain have voted against a government that took them into a hugely unpopular war (90% of the population was against the Iraq war) and then tried to convince them that the bombings were the work of Basque separatists?

No-one will ever know for certain what effect the bombing had. Perhaps it just brought more people out to vote, perhaps some people were reminded of what had happened a year earlier as the Spanish government ignored public opinion to support the war in Iraq, perhaps some people were prompted to support the government in the war against terrorism.

I also think we need to get this into perspective. Terrorists are ruthless and always looking for ways to achieve their ends, and sadly there will be more bombs and more people killed. Trying to influence the result of an election in such an overt way is only one of the many tactics open to them, but it seems simplistic in the extreme to assume that it will always be effective – it is quite plausible that a different reaction by the government of Spain could have led to a totally different result in the election, and in Britain the main opposition party also supported the war so could hardly be a beneficiary of anti-war votes.

As ever, life is much more complicated than it seems at first sight.