The cold caller

MARIANO RAJOY’S phone conversation with Donald Trump was called his Azores Moment.

The offer by Spain’s president to act as Trump’s mediator with Latin America was considered as unnecessary and servile as Spain’s ex-president Jose Maria Aznar decision to sign up for the Iraq war in 2003. 

The moment was immortalised in a photo where George W Bush encircles Aznar with an avuncular arm. Unfortunately Bush always had trouble with Aznar’s name, often referring to him as Mr Ansar, which means “goose” in English.

The un-avuncular Rajoy-Trump phone conversation lasted 15 minutes instead of the planned 20.  And what did Trump make of Rajoy’s name.  Mr Rajah perhaps? 

Possibly Trump hung up believing he had spent 15 minutes trying to cut short a cold caller from an Indian call centre.

Proxy empathy

THE Podemos party conference enthroned Pablo Iglesias as its one and only.  Meanwhile party Number Two Iñigo Errejon who challenged Iglesias’ policies of street protests to bring about change will soon be shunted into a siding.  Errejon also wants change but believes it should arrive via the institutions and parliament.

He and Iglesias come from very comfortable backgrounds and have strings of letters, including doctorates, after their names.  They preach radicality a.k.a. pie in the sky without ever been broke, hungry or jobless.  For all their talk about comrades they are as cushioned from reality as the political caste they affect to scorn.

As per usual

MARIANO RAJOY emerged from his own party conference as unassailable as expected.  What he said was expected too, particularly regarding Cataluña.  Neither he nor the party would ever countenance “any process leading to the destruction of national sovereignty,” he declared.

But if the Catalans won’t be allowed a referendum, what will Rajoy offer in return? Every parent and politician knows that “no” might mean “no” but there has to be a sweetener of some kind to compensate.

Double vision

FORMER Minister of Health Ana Mato resigned because she was deemed to have benefited via her ex-husband from freebies and kickbacks in the Gurtel corruption case.  She knew nothing of their provenance, Mato told judges: “They were given to my husband, not me.”  Can someone please explain how a woman with sufficient ability to rise to ministerial level can be unaware of what goes on in her own family?