The former British Conservative Party chairman, Lord Tebbitt, recently accused the new Conservative leader, David Cameron, of being "intent on purging even the memory of Thatcherism before building a new modern compassionate green globally aware (conservative) party". For Lord Tebbitt the old order is irreplaceable. For Mr Cameron the old order is a millstone holding back his party's potential electoral success.
What Mr Cameron is actually doing is taking a leaf from Tony Blair's book. Mr Blair reinvented the British Labour Party in line with what voters really wanted and in so doing he discarded "Old Labour" (and what was left of its Marxist roots) forever - a line of action that led to Mr Blair's winning three successive general elections.
In Parliamentary democracies, political parties have no alternative to reinventing themselves when, after long stays in opposition, the yearning for power becomes stronger than the emotional affection for obsolete ideological urges.
In other words, they embark on the political struggle to capture the centre. This is what Eddie Fenech Adami did in 1977 and what Alfred Sant did in 1992. Being in government, Lawrence Gonzi has the advantage of being able to adapt to the changes in society almost while they are occurring. Dr Gonzi seems to have grasped this notion well and after a somewhat disappointing start, both his personal popularity and the electorate's confidence in the government have now practically outstripped that of Dr Sant and the MLP, even if only by a small margin.
What about Dr Sant? After having reinvented the MLP and won the 1996 election, his struggle for the political centre took a turn to the worse. Those who still yearned for Labour's outdated policies accused him of disregarding the party's 'soul' and he decided to take up the challenge by calling a premature general election, probably not realising how severely his concept of 'New Labour' had suffered from ambiguity and lack of lucidity in the 22 months since his victory at the polls.
Almost ten years have passed since that triumph and this situation today has hardly improved. When pressed with requests to explain his own position on various issues, he tries to walk a tight rope and invariably ends up resorting to fudge, as was quite obvious in his latest television appearance on Bondi+. His asking for Lm400,000 to be able to indicate where his proposed four 'regional' solid waste recycling plants are to be sited was an incredible faux pas. This sort of talk undermines the sell that Labour is raring to go and knows exactly what it is going to do on day one in government, besides giving the lie to all the criticism it has levelled at Government for spending money on consultancies.
Lack of clarity and of innovation is all too evident in Labour's approved policy papers on tourism and the environment, even though they are being continually touted as 'concrete' proposals by the Labour media - an unmistakable case of newspeak, if there ever was one! Here the Labour Party is undoubtedly camouflaging its yearning for power with an apparent call for a mandate for change, when hardly any significant changes are actually being proposed.
In actual fact, the MLP's approach in tourism and the environment hardly differ in principle from the present administration's policies, and in government the MLP would necessarily continue to build up on what the present administration is doing. In his struggle for the centre Dr Sant really needs to persuade the intelligent part of the electorate that a Labour government can pursue the present government's policies in a more effective way. Instead he pushes the idea that his government will be acting in a different manner and, for example, harks back to the tourism and environment policies he claims to have followed in 1996-98, when circumstances were certainly different and different initiatives are warranted today.
Dr Sant's efforts in the struggle for the political centre do not seem to be bearing fruit. More often than not he is completely missing the target and instead of luring the centre he is saying things that tend to scare it away from the MLP. The centre will probably once again refrain from voting in this year's local elections in another four weeks, ignoring Dr Sant's banal practice of awarding high percentage points to Labour-led councils. The result of those elections will, in practice, hardly have any bearing on how the electorate will vote in the next general election due in 2008.
Indeed over the last ten years, Dr Sant has made the spectre of the return of Old Labour more of a possibility than it ever was. His recent declaration about the GWU's privileged status and his promises of jobs for the boys to make up for alleged or perceived discrimination at the expense of Labour supporters are a case in point.
Similarly, Charles Mangion's attempt at justifying the MLP's record employment of over 8,000 with the public sector in the run-up to the 1987 election did not help matters. More so when he pictured that employment madness, which was mostly unconstitutional, as something that the MLP is still proud of to this very day! Indiscriminately flaunting whatever Labour did when it was in power between 1971 and 1987 can hardly help Labour widen its electoral base.
While this sort of talk can make Dr Sant and the MLP leadership the darling of the party diehards, this is certainly not the way to win the centre, without which Labour cannot win the next general election. But perhaps at the moment Sant feels he needs to seek the approval of Labour diehards more than anything else!
micfal@maltanet.net