Editorial

On June 19, Alfred Sant wrote in his column in The Times that over the past months he had increasingly come to believe that it might be better for the country as a whole to totally shelve the EU membership/partnership issue for a few years. Instead, he argued, we should concentrate on internal matters that needed urgent and disciplined attention.

Dr Sant is not just a member of the Labour Party - he is the party leader and leader of the opposition. His words were generally taken to indicate a shift in party policy. People believed his words meant either that Labour was now getting increasingly aware of the fact that support for EU membership was gaining so much ground that its policy was sounding hollow, or that it was soft-pedalling, fearing that the electorate would overwhelmingly vote in favour of membership in the upcoming referendum.

The party leader's views dominated the local political scene day after day, with those eager to know more about the MLP's policy waiting anxiously for the leader himself to explain his position.

But quite strangely the party leader kept mum. The Times then sought to break Labour's silence and went directly to Dr George Vella, who argued that Dr Sant's views were intentionally blown out of all proportion and that there had been no change whatsoever in the party's policy on Europe. Blown out of all proportion?!

Now, two weeks later, following mounting pressure on the Labour leader to clarify his stand, he has returned to the subject and chosen to dismiss the reaction as puerile. Did his views, as expressed in his column, mean a shift in Labour's policy regarding relations with the EU? Of course not, he strongly asserted in his column in The Times yesterday. It was only a silly line which The Times had pushed hard.

A silly line indeed! As if Dr Sant's views do no longer matter in the party! When Dr Sant and his followers had been pushing the 'Switzerland in the Mediterranean' policy, or partnership, for so long, in preference to membership, his views confounded, to say the least, those who were beginning to believe Labour's stand.

How could his belief that 'it might be better for the country as a whole to totally shelve the EU membership/partnership issue for a few years' be dismissed as just a personal thought, a reflection?

It is preposterous to even think that a party leader's views are to be considered as mere views in the wash of local politics. We all know what weight a party leader's voice carries in the party.

A shift in policy is what most outside the Labour Party's political orbit thought Dr Sant's views led to, and whatever the Labour leader says now in retrospect, there will always remain that very high degree of uncertainty over what policy his party will follow in the unlikely event that it is returned to power.

Will the party, if elected, immediately seek the partnership it has been talking about for so long or would it shelve the idea? Hopefully, the great majority of the electorate will decide against this confusing and most uncertain scenario and opt for the clear direction proposed by the government, membership.