This photograph could be a postcard from another Spain: Madrid’s historic architecture, the Bear and the Strawberry Tree, tourists filling the streets, and a photographer carefully capturing the moment. But behind the postcard image is a country undergoing a profound political and social debate about immigration, security and national identity. Pedro Sánchez deserves serious criticism for the way his government has handled immigration. Spain can and should welcome legal immigrants, refugees and workers who contribute to the economy and integrate into Spanish society.

The right-populist franchise has received the most analytical attention, and fairly so — it is the more theatrically disruptive of the two. But the left operates its own franchise model, runs its own playbook, and is failing by the same internal logic: the substitution of ideological performance for material delivery. The symptoms differ. The structural disease is identical. The left franchise playbook is: centre your politics on solidarity rather than sovereignty, manufacture permanent victims rather than permanent enemies, and signal virtue to the coalition rather than outcomes to the electorate.