Ten years hard labour

It is too early for historians to be detached enough to analyse the massive electoral loss suffered by the MLP 10 years ago this weekend. The arithmetic is simple - Labour, which had ousted the Nationalists in 1996 with a substantial majority, was cast out in 1998 with a much larger majority. And that after 22 months in office.

Simple analysis tells that Labour leader Alfred Sant called the election because ex-MLP leader Dom Mintoff had voted against the government in a non-money vote which the Cabinet had termed a vote of confidence. There can be no doubt that the PM and his team could not govern with Mr Mintoff's sword of Damocles hanging over them. Whether Dr Sant should have called the election then - despite Deputy Leader George Abela's warning to the contrary - or later, can now only be subjected to guesswork.

Fact is that Dr Sant called it with the result that the MLP has spent 10 years out of office, with up to a further five left to go. What may not have been appreciated enough is that the MLP leader probably saw Mr Mintoff's stand against the government as a huge factor in Labour's favour, given that the ex-Labour PM was hated by many non-Labourites and had now alienated many Labourites as well.

The numerical extent of that miscalculation - a swing of some 20,000 votes against Labour - remains remarkable. Still, the miscalculation does not explain why Dr Sant's MLP was now rejected by so many voters. Nationalist propaganda attributes the reason to the Labour government's record of under two years. The PN, with slicker communications management than the MLP, made the electorate forget the bankruptcy inherited from them by the Labour government and focussed attention on the measures taken by Labour in an effort to address it instead.

Bankruptcy aside, Labour created its own two albatrosses. It did away with the Value Added Tax with a mix of substitutes which aped but were inferior to it. Worse, despite the hugely challenging financial and economic situation it inherited, Labour persisted with its anti-EU membership stance, peddling the nonsense of a Switzerland in the Mediterranean.

It would not surprise if historians too conclude that the EU issue, more than any other, undid Labour. The electorate realised more clearly that, under Labour, Malta would remain out of the EU. That is the sharpest reality still calling out from a decade ago - had Labour won again in 1998, membership would have become deader than the Dodo.

The bitter irony for Labourites who believe that their party deserved to govern was that the MLP's error was compounded in the 2003 election. By then Labour had become an anti-EU membership candidate for office. No more pussyfooting with freezing the application to join the EU: membership was out, Labour would go for a vague partnership. The bitter irony came about through the result of the referendum on membership. The "yes" vote won clearly, but Labour's leader claimed otherwise. Instead of accepting the people's verdict the MLP fought the subsequent early election on an anti-membership ticket. Voters coldly extended the sentence they had handed down in 1998, condemning Labour to opposition for another five years.

Came March 2008 and the electorate still had not got Labour back into its system enough. Victory by a whisker for the PN extended 10 years of hard labour to 15. Historians who have not lived through those years will probably wonder whether they had got the facts right at first reading. But there is no questioning them.

The question now is, where does Labour go from here. It has accepted both Vat and EU membership, belatedly demonstrating thereby that they had not been matters of principle: changing stance on them in 1996-98 could have kept Labour in office. Under its new leader Labour is now fully committed to the EU. What matters most is whether he can fashion an MLP reformed by years of hard labour in the political wilderness into a party clearly recognised as a genuine alternative government deserving an overall majority.

There are many past mistakes for the present leadership to learn from.