Álvaro Delgado, new President of the PN: a party increasingly shifting to the left.

Today, Álvaro Delgado was elected president of the National Party's Board of Directors. He did so surrounded by the usual gestures of unity and continuity that characterize Uruguayan party politics when there is little or nothing to renew.

Delgado, who just months ago traveled the country as a presidential candidate, now returns to the front row of party leadership to guarantee what he does best: maintain the status quo. His statement, delivered with studied clarity, is therefore unsurprising: "I'm not, nor will I be, the right wing of the National Party."

The confession reveals much more than it conceals. Under the promise of "modernity" and "centrism," Delgado reaffirms the course of a nationalism increasingly reluctant to shake off the statist lukewarmness that has characterized it for decades. Far from demanding austere administration, lower taxes, real deregulation, or effective economic freedom, the new president of the Board bets on the same old recipe: rhetoric of efficiency, a handful of technocratic promises, and no intention of dismantling the heavy burden of public spending that crushes workers and entrepreneurs alike.

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In white party circles, people say the move is shrewd: keep the progressive sectors within the National Party satisfied and avoid upsetting coalition partners. For those who expected the 2019 electoral victory to enable a liberal right capable of blowing up privileges and restoring freedom to the people, Delgado's leadership is merely the confirmation of an obvious fact: without a right wing, there is no change.

Meanwhile, the bureaucracy remains intact, the state apparatus feeds on new positions, and substantive reforms are conspicuously absent. Delgado, through politically correct statements, consolidates a domesticated nationalism, more concerned with not upsetting the left than with defending liberal convictions that once, timidly, inhabited its ranks.

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Ultimately, Álvaro Delgado is not—nor will he be—the right wing of the National Party. He said so himself. Discreetly, those who know that without a right willing to make others uncomfortable, the spending party never ends, celebrate it.