Portugal’s secret weapon against the cordon sanitaire is the hero of the austerity era, currently biding his time for a political comeback—one poised to unify the Right.
Who does Portugal’s Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, fear the most? If you think his nightmares feature another rival party leader, such as the right-wing firebrand André Ventura, you would be wrong…
The month of March proved difficult for Montenegro, as he was forced to concede yet another victory to the right-wing CHEGA! party (CH), this time by revoking a law allowing genital mutilation and gender-transition “treatments” for minors. The ruling “centre-right” PSD (EPP) appears to have learned lessons from the snap elections of 2015, which further strengthened CH. The conclusion seems to be that tactical concessions on social issues are necessary to stem the haemorrhaging of votes to the conservative Right.
Montenegro’s March troubles were capped by an event that shook the Prime Minister: PSD’s former leader and former Prime Minister, Pedro Passos Coelho, gave an interview criticising the party for failing to reach a coalition agreement with CH. Montenegro, usually calm and composed, quickly scheduled early PSD party elections and challenged Passos Coelho to run for the leadership.
Who is Pedro Passos Coelho?
In 2011, Portugal was on its knees. Its socialist Prime Minister had bankrupted the Iberian republic through “neo-Keynesian” spending policies that devastated Lisbon’s credit rating. Driven out of the lending markets, the socialist government was forced to request a bailout, leading Portugal to join the infamous PIGS group of countries subjected to Troika intervention.
Unsurprisingly, the bailout led to early elections that brought a centre-right coalition to power under the leadership of the new Prime Minister, Pedro Passos Coelho. He may well have been the most hated man in democratic Portugal up to that point, as he was tasked with implementing the austerity measures imposed by the Troika, raising taxes and freezing salaries for years to come.
For the Portuguese Left, austerity was tantamount to religious heresy. To progressives and egalitarians, austerity meant declining living standards and imposing sacrifices on the lower and middle classes that the wealthy would supposedly escape.
Another aspect that enraged the Left was Passos Coelho’s personality. A man of calm demeanour and humility, he headed a biracial family in one of Lisbon’s less glamorous working-class suburbs, making it difficult for the Left to portray him as a detached and corrupt aristocrat, as they would have preferred. His fiscal rigour, combined with his modest working-class background, invited comparisons with the dictator Salazar in ways the Left found uncomfortable.
Portugal TEVE um Primeiro Ministro Liberal Clássico, mas o PS e os comunistas mandaram embora.
Passos Coelho ontem:"A reforma do Estado não se faz num PowerPoint, na verdade. Isto dá um certo trabalho, é preciso chamar as pessoas e, sobretudo, não é uma coisa que se estude… pic.twitter.com/HLzap1Nf7h
— claudiashandi 🇵🇹 🇬🇧 (@claudiashandi) February 13, 2026
Nevertheless, the character assassination campaign against him was so relentless and vicious that the Left succeeded in painting the Right as responsible for austerity, even though it had been socialist governments that handed over the “hot potato” of the public debt crisis. PSD ministers were hounded in the streets by protesters incited by left-wing propaganda.
Historical revisionism is a favourite socialist tactic, and it eventually enabled the shameless Left to return to power for another decade. In the 2015 elections, against all odds, the PSD-CDS coalition led by Prime Minister Passos Coelho miraculously won a plurality against the Socialist Party (PS), led by the now Brussels-based António Costa. But Costa had a surprise in store. So intense had the Left’s anti-austerity fervour become that the wily Costa rhetorically entrapped the communists and Trotskyists into helping him defeat the PSD-CDS budgets in parliament. Labelled the “contraption” in Portugal, Costa’s formula would later be adopted by socialist governments in Spain and Germany: a minority government sustained by the unofficial parliamentary support of the far-left.
For a decade, Pedro Passos Coelho faded from public life. His name had become electoral poison, while personal tragedies overshadowed his private life. His wife died of cancer in 2020, followed months later by his brother, while various other illnesses plagued the family and kept him away from politics.
Passos’s “private calvary” lasted a decade, during which the former Prime Minister only rarely made public appearances. Lately, however, his statements suggest a more openly conservative worldview. While always careful not to appear partisan, Pedro Passos Coelho has never renounced his friendship with André Ventura, who left the PSD to found the insurgent conservative CHEGA! party. Indeed, it was Passos who promoted Ventura as a municipal candidate in 2017, thereby launching the younger politician’s career. While much of the PSD despises Ventura and enthusiastically upholds “red lines” against any deal with CH, the former Prime Minister has never expressed animosity toward him. Moreover, most CH voters consistently polled favourably toward Passos Coelho as a potential presidential candidate in this year’s election.
In the 2010s, Passos Coelho was regarded as the leader of the liberal wing of the PSD, but his recent return to public debate suggests a more conservative evolution. Interestingly, it was both liberals and conservatives who abandoned the PSD in 2019 to found CHEGA! and the Liberal Initiative (IL), two parties that together now account for roughly 30% of the electorate. Portugal currently finds itself facing the same dilemma as France or Germany: a tripartite political system incapable of forming grand coalitions capable of breaking political deadlock, with CH and IL on the Right, PS on the Left, and PSD stranded in the middle.
Because of Passos Coelho’s austerity-era reputation and his apparently conservative outlook, he is widely viewed as the ideal figure to unite Portugal’s three nominally right-wing parties: PSD (EPP), Liberal Initiative (Renew), and CHEGA! (Patriots). Such a coalition could sustain a long-term government and perhaps even enact constitutional reforms. It also helps that Pedro Passos Coelho maintains cordial relations with André Ventura and already possesses experience in coordinating a governing coalition under difficult circumstances.
This potential has not escaped the attention of Portugal’s current Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, whose cordon sanitaire strategy suffered a blow in the recent presidential election. Ventura humiliated the PSD candidate by doubling his vote total in the first round and becoming the only right-wing candidate to reach the final round against the socialist contender.
How have other nations dealt with establishment ostracism of national conservatives? In Hungary, Viktor Orbán rose within the establishment and was ostracised only after achieving power and implementing conservative reforms. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni managed to co-opt a leaderless Forza Italia and a Lega weary of establishment discrimination, enabling her to lead a national coalition deferential to globalist institutions.
Could Portugal provide a third model—one of reformist providentialism as an antidote to establishment quarantine? The final unknown is whether a party like the PSD can survive if it continues along its current intolerant trajectory.
The Portuguese, after all, are nothing if not devoted to fate.
Miguel Nunes Silvais the Director of Portugese think tank Trezeno Institute, and a local councilman affiliated with CHEGA!
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