The Dancing Queen

I don't know whether it's fair to judge a political party by the music they choose for their conferences, but in the case of the Partido Popular I've always tried to avoid letting issues of fairness cloud my judgement. The PP had their regional conference in Madrid this weekend and “Mamma Mia” was the theme chosen for the acclamation of the newly elected president. This personality, identified on the badges worn by delegates as “Espp”, was re-elected to her post with the slender support of slightly over 96% of those attending. I like to think that the other 4% are already serving their sentence tilling the land on one of the Condesa's many country estates. Oddly enough, given their reaction to Mariano Rajoy being the only candidate as national leader, there were no protests in the Madrid PP about delegates having just a single candidate to vote for.
Madrid's mayor was introduced to the theme of “The Winner Takes It All”, a choice which has been widely interpreted as a reference to the fact that none of Gallardón's supporters are represented in the ruling bodies of the Madrid party. It's one thing to have a show of unity, quite another to start putting it into practice. By the time the PP in Madrid gather together again it should already be clear whether their leader's attempt to move onto greater things has succeeded or not. If I was them I would take the precaution of recording a copy of “You Can't Always Get What You Want”. Just in case.