"In Moncloa there are no mice; in Downing Street and the Elysée I have seen them"

London"In Moncloa Palace there are no rats. In Downing Street and the Élysée Palace there are, I've seen some". More details on M-30 politics: the usually insulted taxi drivers of Madrid, at least the two who drove a certain Alastair Campbell last week upon arriving in the Spanish capital, believe that Sánchez is the best president for Spain. The first one directly said the following: "He is the best president we have ever had, and it's high time we realized it". And the second one: "I don't care what the polls say, he will win again". So there you have it. Not everyone listens to Cope or Libertad Digital. Some might have SER on all the time, and might make more cameos in Almodóvar films than in Torrente's.

Who is Alastair Campbell and why does he know so much about rats in the circles of power? Because he has walked around a lot. And because, among other reasons, he had already visited Moncloa – "A true art gallery", he says – and the Élysée at the hand of Tony Blair. Campbell, in short, is a veteran of Westminster village. Former spin doctor for Blair who, to simplify greatly, had to leave his post in 2003 following the Labour government's crude manipulations of the –non-existent– weapons of mass destruction that led to the Iraq War. Together with Rory Stewart, former British Conservative Party MP and briefly minister at the end of Theresa May's government (2019), they posted an hour-long conversation with the President of the Spanish Government for their show The rest is politics.

This is the most prestigious and followed political podcast in the United Kingdom, and possibly in the entire Anglosphere, at least the non-Trumpist one. They naively believe that a different world and politics are possible. Within an order and without radicalism. The order that Brexit, Donald Trump, populisms, and digital society have shattered.

Campbell and Stewart went to Madrid to check, motu proprio, if Pedro Sánchez is the global leader and nemesis of Donald Trump to combat the Death Star's power. The outcome is difficult to predict, and to know it, we will have to wait for the next general elections in Spain. For Campbell, Sánchez is "a very impressive man, a phenomenal politician", and for Stewart, he is "brilliant, very skillful, capable of taking a position and then reversing the decision".

The questions tiptoe around some of the most common criticisms of Sánchez on the domestic front. But it is an understandable sin. The podcast has a global audience that, after all, may not be as interested in knowing how the Spanish president justifies the PSOE's corruption cases, the amnesty law –although he does– or if he believes Catalonia will be independent someday, a question to which he replies: "I believe Catalonia simply wants to be respected, for its identity to be recognized, just like that of the Basque Country". Did he suspect it more or less but didn't realize it until the 2023 ballot boxes finally opened his eyes?

For the very keen observers, like this chronicler himself, the conversation is unmissable. Not so much for what President Sánchez says about domestic or foreign policy, or about his confrontation with Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, but because it confirms the fascination that outside of Spain he causes in progressive or centre and centre-left circles. For example, when he says that "Europe must be today, especially today, a force for good". What does that mean? "That we need to build alliances, not just with the US, but also with the rest of the world, and that we need to have a more committed approach to global debates such as climate change, inequality, social justice, migration, and, of course, what we should do with artificial intelligence and its regulation".

Who wins?

Who benefits most from this podcast? Sánchez not much, because if he lost the elections against the opinion of the second taxi driver mentioned and, let's say, was offered a professorship at Harvard, Donald Trump would not give him a visa. On the other hand, in the hypothetical case that Abascal and Feijóo understand English, they will resort to the usual manual: he doesn't talk about what truly interests Spaniards... Campbell and Stewart, in turn, climb another rung in their prestige: the doors of Moncloa are not opened to everyone. And when it comes to native podcasters, La Pija y la Quinqui arrive there before others who are more outspoken.

A one-hour interview later, the question as a listener is inevitable: what has changed in the world in recent years for the polls to indicate that the rats have, finally, a great chance of taking over Moncloa as they have taken over the White House? For now, and according to Campbell, Perro Sánchez is much more effective than Larry, the old cat of Downing Street. For how long? The rest is not just politics, it will also be history.