For me, as for many of you I think, this past week has been peppered with conversations animated by the idea of an alliance between the PN and AD. Some people even proposed a merger between the two parties - and no, these were not wild-eyed radicals, but people with a good reputation, in their respective professions, for unflappable analysis.
With so many intelligent people in favour of an alliance, I think it is important to have a closer look at the idea. Upon inspection, it turns out that an alliance would have weakened the yes vote at the general election.
A merger (to begin with that) would have been easy for the MLP to laugh off. It would have been portrayed as a case of one large party swallowing up a smaller one.
AD would have lost some of its following, and its leadership would have been denounced as closet Nationalists, returning to their true fold in the same way that Wenzu Mintoff and Toni Abela have returned to theirs.
An alliance could not be laughed off in that way. But it would not have been adequate, either. The yes alliance would have presented itself as a national organisation, naturally, yet in truth it would have alienated two key segments of voters without whom no alliance is truly national.
One of these segments is made of those hunters who usually support the PN. Many of these voted yes; however, many others also thought it in their best interest to vote no. In this electoral campaign, it is most important for the PN to attract the hunters who voted no back into its fold. It might not be disastrous if it does not manage this. However, it would be suicidal if it did anything to alienate the hunters who are already on the yes side.
What would an alliance with AD - the archenemy of the hunters - have achieved for the yes cause? It would have ensured that the PN hunters who voted no continue to stay away from the PN. Moreover, it would have seriously risked alienating the rest of the PN hunters.
Let us come to the second segment of voters. For want of a better term, let us call them social conservatives whose vote is very much guided by the pronouncements of the Church hierarchy. These are the people who voted against the MLP in 1998 in part, at least, because of the divorce issue. No prizes for guessing what their reaction to an alliance with the pro-divorce AD would have been.
This double alienation of votes would have had an intensified effect in Gozo, where many people belong to both segments. Sixty per cent of Gozo voted yes. I am very doubtful that that vote would have held up if the PN had formed an alliance with AD. I do not need to remind readers that, when the PN does not elect three MPs from Gozo, it tends to lose the general election.
A PN-AD alliance would have lost many key votes. However, would it have brought in more votes than those lost? It is most unlikely.
Most AD candidates cannot even muster the few hundred votes needed to win a seat on a local council. As we have known for a long time, AD's predicament is that on a national basis it has enough support to deserve one seat in parliament; but it does not have any remotely comparable support in any single electoral district.
Therefore an alliance would have been a false solution to the real problem of securing the yes referendum victory at the general election.
There is no radical solution to the problem. There is only the hard work of rational persuasion.
Yes-voters of social-democrat convictions should be asked to consider the MLP electoral programme. In so far as Alfred Sant is promising anything concrete, does it qualify as social-democrat? So far all I have heard are assurances based on conservative, trickle-down economics and a neo-liberal slogan based on me-first.
What a contrast with the EU's programmes of social protection and redistribution of wealth from the richer countries to those less well-off!