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Spain's ruling People's Party leads opinion poll as a survey reveals that 44% of the majority would vote against the newcomer socialists, Podemos.

Support for Spain's ruling People's Party still outweighs left-wing newcomer Podemos. (AFP)

Spains ruling Peoples Party (PP) came first in an opinion poll on Sunday, one of its strongest results in recent surveys, while the Socialists and left-wing newcomer Podemos were in close second and third place respectively.

Of those surveyed, 28.6% said they would vote for the the centre-right PP, the poll showed, still a huge slip from the 44.6% absolute majority with which it won the 2011 elections.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoys party does not have a big rival on the right of the political spectrum, and a large problem for the PP would be abstention, the poll showed.

Spain is expected to hold parliamentary elections later this year. Around a fifth of those who voted for the PP in 2011 would abstain this time round, the poll found.

Support for the Socialist Party (PSOE) has been sapped by Podemos, the poll showed. The Socialists would take 23.4% of the vote, down from the 28.8% they won in 2011. Year-old Podemos came a close third with 23.2%.

Of those who voted for the Socialists in the last general election, 18.7% would now choose Podemos, the poll showed.

The survey was carried out by pollsters NC Report, interviewing 1600 Spaniards from December 9 to December 30 2015.Reuters

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Spain: Socialism lags behind in opinion poll

DAVID Camerons public relations nightmare continued yesterday as Labour once again hammered Tory NHS privatisation plans.

A Tory poster parodied thousands of times since it was published at the last general election came back to haunt the Prime Minister again.

The original poster bearing Mr Camerons airbrushed face read: We cant go on like this. Ill cut the deficit, not the NHS.

But the latest reworking published by Labour yesterday said: The Tories want to cut spending on public services back to the levels of the 1930s, when there was no NHS.

It was launched by Labours election strategy chief Douglas Alexander along with a dossier detailing the damage done to the NHS under the Tories.

It shows how seven out of 15 patients rights enshrined in the NHS constitution have been breached including by soaring waiting times for A&E and cancer tests.

And, in a bid to make the general election a referendum on the NHS, Mr Alexander warned that the NHS wont survive another five years of David Cameron.

There is nothing which better symbolises the difference between Labours vision for the future and that of the Tories than our NHS, he said.

Another five years of this rotten government could put us on course for a doubling of the scale of privatisation as competition is put before patient care.

British Medical Association chairman Dr Mark Porter also delivered a blow to the governments record.

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Tories road to socialism

Socialism has come to Downton Abbey.

The year is 1924 and Ramsey McDonald has just been elected as Prime Minister. With the Labor Partys antipathy toward the cosseted likes of the Crawley family, Sir Robert (Hugh Bonneville) is having the upper-crust equivalent of a meltdown in Sunday nights fifth-season premiere of the Julian Fellowes drama.

Wearing a zip-up sweatshirt and corduroys, a very jolly Bonneville sits down at the Lambs Club in midtown to discuss the momentous changes that await the Crawleys, as the world clock brings them closer to the Great Depression of 1929.

There was a real concern that a socialist government would tax the gentry to extinction, says Bonneville. Or be as radical as what had happened in Russia four years previously, in terms of the expulsion of that strata of society. Robert is absolutely obsessed that the estate is about to be ravaged.

The 51-year-old actor is visiting New York with select members of the Downton cast, attending screenings for select fans and politely answering their questions. The phenomenon of the show the most popular in PBS history has transformed his life.

He is now offered parts in movies starring George Clooney (The Monuments Men) and marketed by the Weinstein Company (the forthcoming family film Paddington).

And he is not even remotely tempted to tempt fate, even if means asking to see advance scripts.

I had a word with [executive producer] Gareth [Neame] yesterday that Julian had delivered the first two episodes for the new season and theyre in really good health, he says. I dont even want to quiz. I probably should be analyzing the character arc and fighting for more or less. But I just love diving in and seeing whats going to happen.

Whats going to happen is that Sir Robert is going to clash with the nearest socialist in town, a firebrand schoolteacher named Sarah Bunting (Daisy Lewis), a friend of his son-in-law, Tom (Allen Leech). An invitation is arranged for her attend a rather important family event.

And they dont waste much time getting into an argument about politics.

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Labor pains for Downton Abbey in Season 5

Your Socialism Is Not My Socialism
Not all socialism is Leninism Like My Page On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/RedScare-TV/775874865784324?ref=hl.

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Your Socialism Is Not My Socialism - Video

There is hope that this time, with a rise in grass-roots social activism, capitalism will not win.

There is hope that this time, capitalism will not win. (Reuters)

NEWS ANALYSIS

A newly energised left wing wants to make 2015 their year. They have given up on turning the ANC back to socialism, and have nothing but jokes to offer about the South African Communist Party. But a rise in grass-roots social activism (and of course money from the trade union Numsa to help organise) has them hopeful that, this time, capitalism wont win. Again. So will 2015 see the rise of a broad left in South Africa like were seeing in parts of Europe and Latin America? We assess the chances of a red tide flooding South Africas political landscape.

There were a mere seven months between the then Reverend Allan Boesaks clarion call for an anti-apartheid united front at the Transvaal Anti-South African Indian Council conference in January 1983 and the launch of the United Democratic Front (UDF) at Rocklands Community Centre in Mitchells Plain on August 20 that year. A bustle of activity lay in between, leading to the quick formation of regional structures, an interim national committee, and the convening of a two-day planning meeting in July 1983.

An iconic photograph of the launch depicts ANC Womens League stalwart Frances Baard at the podium, surrounded by raised fists in a hall packed to the rafters. The event was followed by a mass rally of 10000 people.

Fast-forward three decades and, in contrast, the build-up to the similarly monikered and ideologically broad United Front was a lot tamer. The United Front, whose impetus came out of a conference of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) in December 2013, has been seen by some attendants of its preparatory assembly in December last year as diffidently reluctant to address issues of power head-on by forming a political party.

The assembly, attended by just over 300 people, postponed the launch of the United Front by a further four months and was marked by what some attendees called ideological reticence, with discourse around the definitions of socialism and the bourgeoisie being deferred for further discussion.

What is the left likely to look like? In the face of rising community protests and the fracturing and morphing of social movements that peaked in the era of former president Thabo Mbeki, it forces the question of what terrain the left in South Africa inhabits. What is the left likely to look like should there be a drastic realignment within trade union federation Cosatu, not to mention an ongoing metamorphosis of the countrys social movements?

Numsa has already begun sending international task teams out to scout the development of left politics in other countries and they will report back at Marchs central committee, according to United Front convenor and Numsa head of education Dinga Sikwebu.

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Left moves to seize the moment