Rubalcaba rehearses role as leader of the opposition

On Monday night both Rubalcaba and Rajoy did what they set out to do. Rubalcaba wanted to mobilize the undecided voters, sowing doubt about the PP's hidden intentions regarding unemployment insurance, healthcare, education and pensions. All Rajoy wanted was not to lose any of those voters who, it seems, have already decided, and are enough to give him a clear majority. They seemed to be in the Congress chamber already, Rajoy on the government bench, Rubalcaba in opposition.

Rubalcaba spent more time picking holes in the PP platform than on explaining his own. For his predictable answers, Rajoy trusted more to his notes than to his much-vaunted memory. Every suggestion that the PP would cut back on social programs, was countered with the inarguable fact that the PSOE had been forced to do this too.

Rajoy's one recipe was to create employment, to recover tax revenue and thus maintain the welfare state. Though called on to do so, he never entered into details of just how the PP plans to manage this. As in his campaign videos, he simply said: "We know how. We can."

Rubalcaba cast particular doubt on what the PP plans to do in public education, with special mention of what it has already done in the Madrid region. A moment came when Rajoy replied with some heat to what he considered an insidious remark: "I do not accept the suggestion that your intentions are better than mine," following on from a series of promises on public healthcare and the purchasing power of pensions.

Given the ruinous record of the outgoing government, Rubalcaba perforce admitted to some errors (not having punctured the real estate bubble in time), while trying to convince his potential voters that the hard climb out of the crisis will be easier with him than with Rajoy. What he seemed to lack was the force to convince these voters that his party deserves another chance to govern: an impossible task. He did show that he is still the PSOE's best parliamentarian when it comes to leading the opposition fight to Rajoy, provided that his fellow Socialists do not decide to burn him at the stake after likely defeat.

Many matters were forgotten, some of capital importance: the EU, mentioned only by Rubalcaba in connection with fiscal consolidation, and tangentially by Rajoy in the final minutes. The mutual commitment to cooperate in a definitive solution to the problem of ETA, whatever the line taken by either party, was a fitting final note.