Speed Dating For Socialists

In a week when the Mallorcan agenda has been dominated by whether or not Hamish McHamish can travel from Stornoway to Palma without having to go via New York and can do so, moreover, at a time that allows him to first enjoy a hearty breakfast, and by a broader agenda of the redefinition of omnishambles by England's cricket team and something that has been happening in "Eastenders" (of which I remain blissfully unaware), Mallorcan life has staggered on in not untypically chaotic fashion and has, in the process, introduced the concept of speed dating to political formations. Parties everywhere have been getting into bed with each other, seduced by the merest hint of flirtation. Fancy a pact? Your place or mine? The left have been tying themselves up in knots of mutual bondage: several shades of political neither black nor white that may, by the time they have finished pacting away, exceed fifty. As there are three more than fifty municipalities in Mallorca, then this is eminently feasible.

When the cat of Podemos was thrown among the pigeons of socialist or something-resembling socialist parties, its claws bared ready to attack and have a good lunch, little might we have appreciated that these various parties (of which there is an unfathomably large number) would resort to an unseemly scavenging for the scraps of power by discarding ideological differences and, with or without the Top Cat of Podemos, combine them to make recipes that can best be described as cooking up stews of "anyone but the Partido Popular". Ingredients may be incompatible, their flavours may clash, but who cares? It's all about becoming Master Political Chef (or Chefs).

Here a pact, there a pact, everywhere a pact, pact. But amidst all this coalescing and ganging up on the poor PP, there is Podemos which one minute doesn't know whether it will sanction involvement in municipal elections and the next minute appears to do so and which says, on the one hand, that there can't be any pacts and then, on the other, appears to change its mind.

As much as one can actually fathom out what is going on, we do know that, for instance, in Sóller its local Podemos lot has defied politburo orders by forming a pact with PSOE, Més and Guanyem. You, Sóller Podemos sorts, can't become Junts per Soller, says the citizens' council of the Balearics Podemos and if you insist on being a junt, you'll be expelled from the party. Here is just one example of how the speed dating has been working and is, as a consequence, causing total and utter confusion. What are the voters meant to make of all this? Who actually might they vote for?

One feels that rather than anyone but the PP, the electorate may come to the conclusion that it's better the devil they know after all rather than some cobbled-together amalgamation of God knows what.