Beyond the ongoing frenetic speculation, machinations and spin, and manoeuvres, where is the Labour Party heading? The question is asked, particularly after the calculated moves over the May Day break, both by many who back the party, as well as by others who are want to see a viable alternative to the Nationalists, working its way from strong Opposition to watchdog the government and keep it in check towards breaking the PN trend next time round. It is far easier to see where Labour is coming from than to answer the question.
The party is coming from its second successive defeat in a general election at a time when it could have been and was needed to be back in office. The stumbling block was not the European Union issue, but the way it was handled. The Labour leadership mobilised the party into virulent opposition to membership. It argued that Malta would be better off from a relationship that did not include accession to the Union.
Those who say, in the wake of Labour's failure to achieve an electoral majority in five of the six general elections held since 1981, that the party was not a commercial enterprise on sale to attract votes, that it could not jettison its non-membership approach for expediency, sidestep a clear point.
It was not a matter of changing the party's position on the EU to please a bigger segment of the electorate, including a considerable fraction within it. If anything, Labour suffered when it seemed to change for precisely that purpose, as in the case of belatedly coming round to promising a minister for Gozo, and when it made last-gasp proposal to cut income tax regressively (giving most to those who earn most) in stark contrast to its usual social-justice commitment to progressive taxation (taking most from those who receive most).
What Labour could have done was to fight the EU issue with the mechanism of the referendum, and to accept the outcome, as the Nationalists would have been obliged to do. That way the MLP would not have ditched its non-membership stand, but would have isolated the issue from the general election and left it for a separate and specific democratic decision by the people. It seems more than likely that, while it might still have lost the referendum, the MLP would have gone on to win the general election, whenever the prime minister chose to call it, and however the government massaged the electorate in between.
The country would have got a really new government, giving Alfred Sant another opportunity to lead his team towards attempting to reshape Malta, though this time within the precincts of EU membership. The MLP did not follow such a track, as it was perfectly entitled not to do. And that is now water under the bridge. Yet it is ironic that the party leader, Labour MPs and unsuccessful election candidates who have pronounced themselves since the failure to regain office on April 12, have manfully struck the common note of stressing that the party cannot now cavil and has to accept and work within the reality of membership.
That could have been exactly the same outturn had the referendum mechanism been accepted, with the difference that Labour would probably have been returned to office.
Now both country and party have to look ahead. The country at large is eager to know what lies in store. The Nationalists, who want to see their opponents in disarray, spin ferociously. They do not disdain to stoop to untruths to fan the flames of speculation. Selective reporting, misreporting and spin do have some impact on public opinion and on that of some of Labour's activists and sympathisers. Yet what counts for any party is what that party itself does. And that, to those of us who observe from the outside to try to analyse, is by no means as clear as a baby's innocence.
Leading up to last May Day's dramatic mood swing by the Labour leader, signals from the party's media had been mixed. Its radio transmitted a monolithic message, almost as if the election had not taken place at all. To the extent that it had to recognise its fatal outcome, the radio concentrated on insistence that the loss leadership should not leave or be replaced. The party's Internet medium, while by no means cowering in defeatism, included views from those who argued bluntly that it was time for change at the top when giving space to those invited to express an opinion on the election result.
What observers and party faithful focus upon most, however, is not the MLP and Nationalist media put-over, but what the Labour leadership was indicating it would do. The way the MLP leader spun out the post-defeat plot he had crafted left many befuddled.
Having said that it was not his intention to seek re-election to the post, Alfred Sant told the Labour National Executive that he might reconsider his position. That triggered fresh speculation. One theory doing the rounds well before the Nationalist media began spinning it at will was that he would be willing to linger on as leader for a limited period, ostensibly to allow the party time to reflect, rather than to act in bitter and acrimonious cold dawn of defeat.
That way he could also stand by his initial and inevitable acceptance of responsibility. Someone has to be held responsible, he said in It-Torca (April 20). He reiterated that in his address on Thursday, and immediately proceeded not to continue to hold himself responsible. He changed his intention not to contest to a declaration that he would, as remains his right. Before that move, the theory that he might stay on, at least for a while, was elaborated with a variant that had gained strength.
It was that Dr Sant had his successor very much in mind, someone presumed not to radically overhaul what he had fashioned 11 years leading the Labour Party. It was thought to be merely by the way that he would never publicly anoint him, as his predecessors Dom Mintoff and (initially) Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici had done when they decided it was time to move on.
There was also much speculation that the current leader was determined to block any attempt to succeed him from outside the parliamentary Labour Party. The impression was transmitted that he might let his name go forward if there was such an attempt, though he would withdraw when the coast was clear. That theory gained sustenance from the fact that there are several elected MPs who up to Thursday morning were canvassing the party's centres in the towns and villages for their favour "should the leader not stand".
It was not for one moment thought that anyone close to the sitting leader would have stuck his neck out to such an extent had he not been given the nod by him. Political plots tend to contain many twists and turns. Labour activists were saying that such a ruse would not permit a proper decision on how the party should move ahead. It would put in a straitjacket those who felt, even without looking back and pointing fingers, that it was now time to move forward on a new path, rooted in the party's principles, but with radical changes at the top.
Among those led to such a conviction some recalled Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici when he stepped down voluntarily in 1992 and showed unmistakably that he felt his deputy leaders should go too. There were also those who argued that such a ruse would not be complimentary towards, and would not help at all the person who could ultimately replace Dr Sant according to that particular plot.
Such a person would have required the propelling dynamic of his own personal standing, based on his capabilities and record, to gain respect. He would have needed to be his own brave man, and not to start off from behind the protective skirt of the present unsuccessful leader. Even though the heir apparent in this scenario would have been an ingrained part of the old New Labour team, he would have been fully aware that he could not offer more of the old same.
He would have been the first to appreciate that he must not carry unnecessary baggage, that he must be free to effect changes, however judiciously he went about it. And, in particular to strive to unify and heal where there was or may arise division. There are clear signs that such awareness did exist. It is in fact unthinkable that anyone immersed in structured political thinking was not moving along those lines, confident that what he needed from the current leader was not his endorsement, which could in fact prove to be a curse, but space. Despite the apparently tactical shifting of Dr Sant's initial position (he would 'reconsider'), it seemed to be tacitly understood that there would be such space.
From the very inner circle emissaries had gone out to find a unifying candidate, something they were presumed not to dare attempt unless they were certain the present leader was set on making way through what has been described as an 'honourable and even exemplary' decision not to contest again.
Instead came May Day's twist in the tale which, some said, was so unexpected and unfair that it made those who had been canvassing for support for their candidature look 'like puppets'. Dr Sant's invitation to others to contest him is being seen as cynical rubbing of salt into the wounds of potential candidates. They responded by getting smartly out of the way.
So what happens now? Alfred Sant, who proved this columnist wrong, for one, will face no real peril other than some blank or negative votes in a secret ballot to endorse him. Any contesting will be restricted to fill the two deputy leader posts. Pent-up feelings may peak through there, but then again, perhaps not.
Whatever the outcome of it all the question, Whither Labour? will not be answered by the mere fact that the party delegates will put in place (by reinstating or changing) a leadership and (eventually) a central administration. Though who the singers are will be quite important, of far more relevance will be the party's song for the future.
What will be the Labour agenda over the next five years? When Dr Sant became leader in 1992, together with George Vella, George Abela and others he reconstructed the Malta Labour Party. He led it on to brake the failure of Dom Mintoff (in 1981) and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici (in 1987 and 1992) to gain a majority over Eddie Fenech Adami and the PN through a magnificent victory in 1996.
After the Labour government's death-out-of-season in 1998, in an election Dr Sant called notwithstanding the caution on its timing expressed by George Abela, effective power became concentrated in too few hands in the party. Not enough meaningful critical exchange of views took place. Intolerance grew, breeding debilitating self-restraint. Policy formulation responded to calculation of how to avoid any suggestion of a democratic socialist hue from torpedoing efforts to revamp the party's appeal to the electorate.
Whoever will be leading and administering the party from the coming weeks on has to delve into that recent past. To see what to learn from it. What to discard. What to use in the rebuilding process that must again take place. To define how to respond to the protestations of activists that, in a manner similar to Tony Blair becoming a Thatcherite look-alike the MLP has become too indistinct from the Nationalist Party, in terms of economic policy, influenced as it is by external circumstances, and of social policy, an area where the Nationalists have striven to make Labour's old clothes their own.
Political plots may be intriguing. They may make their weavers purr with satisfaction. Political songs that can penetrate both heart and mind, in contrast, have to be straightforward. They must be honest and directly appealing. The way ahead will have to take into account inescapable realities, but must also differentiate a Labour Party aiming beyond the horizon. Differentiation will not come through glib rhetoric. Only from drawing on the party's fundamental inspirations.
Will Labour taste success again? With the EU membership issue settled it should not but win the right to govern five years from now, against an opponent that will have grown jaded, probably more arrogant from the heady fumes of long office, and no longer with its icon, Eddie Fenech Adami, at the helm.
The more difficult question Labour has to face is what will it do when the electorate puts its trust in it. What song will the forthcoming leadership, however made up, guide the party to compose with feeling, line by serious line, note by moving note, structured on the lasting tenets of deep democratic and social commitment, sometimes still described with pride as social democracy?