For love or money

Cassio, according to the famous line in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, had a "lean and hungry look". He appeared to think too much. And too much thinking was the sign of a hidden agenda.

But if the bard had to write today, adapting his play to our commercialised world, who knows if he might not write that Cassio's lean and hungry look came from "writing" too much?

The political insider who reveals all in a widely discussed diary, published with a hefty advance, is becoming more commonplace on the international market. It remains absent in Malta, however, and it is worth asking whether we should count our blessings or rather hope that Maltese political insiders begin to follow suit.

Currently on the market, in both the UK and the US, is Alastair Campbell's diary on his time at Downing Street. Tony Blair's former communications strategist is said to have received an advance of £1.5m. His book is selling briskly on both sides of the Atlantic.

Presumably, even though Mr Campbell has cut out any mention of Mr Blair's turbulent political partnership with Gordon Brown, readers hope for insights into how the Blair kitchen cabinet worked, especially when the decision to go to war in Iraq was taken.

Mr Campbell's diary, however, is not an exception. It follows other "kiss and tell" political diaries, for example that by Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British Ambassador to Washington. That book was avidly read for its acerbic descriptions of prominent politicians who passed through Washington.

This sort of diary, while providing some insight into how important decisions were taken, tends to be superficial. Perhaps because such diaries are written with both eyes firmly on a financial deal, their emphasis tends to be on what is sensational but not necessarily terribly interesting.

Sir Christopher's most memorable observations tend to focus on cocktail party gossip. Mr Campbell's diary depicts a government swinging from elation to depression and back. There is little sense of a big picture. Yet, this might have to do more with what the diarist was able to understand, than with what was there to be understood.

Political diaries written purely for money almost certainly do more harm than good. The need for speedy publication to capitalise on timeliness often means that important information is left out, since it would still be very sensitive. At the same time, the suspicion that people around you might be scribbling your every sigh and outburst in their diary erodes the trust that is necessary for free discussion in government inner circles.

Political diaries have also been written for the love of it (though the money is never too far off in the background). The late former British Cabinet minister Alan Clark, a semi-detached observer of high politics, wrote several volumes of interesting diaries; his description of how Margaret Thatcher was politically decapitated by her Cabinet is a classic in the genre.

Then there are the diaries, or accounts, written by the protagonists themselves. Since, as Jeremy Paxman observed in his book The Political Animal, most political careers end in tears, such books are usually written to straighten the record and to influence future historians.

Some such books are often too long - I never finished reading Mrs Thatcher's litany of how she was right and others were wrong. But they often also manage to illuminate important episodes of national and international history. (Sometimes they do this by angering somebody else into publishing his or her own book!)

In more recent times, a new kind of publication has begun to make an appearance on the market: the "diary" or testament published prior to an election, rather than after leaving office. Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, Romano Prodi and Silvio Berlusconi have all published such books.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that all these politicians hail from presidential political systems, or at least one where the candidate for office transcends the political programme of the party or coalition he or she represents. Their books are written to perform a conjuring trick: They are meant to show their protagonist as, simultaneously, a truly ordinary person as well as someone with a special leader's vision.

I would think that if this kind of book became more common in Malta, it would be a sign that party politics was returning to politics based on leaders' charisma, and possibly giving way to a presidential system.

But as someone whose first love as a student was history, I do wish that in Malta it became more usual to publish political diaries and memoirs, naturally after a discreet period of time has passed. The popularity of the memoirs published by the likes of Herbert Ganado and Lino Spiteri shows that there is welcoming space for them.

On the Maltese scene, the omissions in such a genre are often as intriguing as what is said. The publication of more complete diaries and memoirs need a tolerant political environment. Franker diaries and memoirs would possibly be a sign of our republic's growing political maturity.

Dr Attard Montalto is a Labour member of the European Parliament.