It is well known that Gordon Brown is a dead man walking far too long. Economic troubles, pathetic Youtube broadcasts, the expenses storm, a string of top-level resignations - the works. Listening to BBC radio, I chanced across a political analyst (the name escapes me) explaining why, to his mind, the prudent Scot refuses to bow out regardless.

Labour leaders, he suggested, are generally more resilient (read 'stubborn') than their Conservative counterparts. They're ideological creatures, which also means that they tend to believe they're on a mission to save the planet, and as such quite irreplaceable. For the same reason, the Labour Party has a relatively high tolerance of lame duck leaders. The Conservatives, on the other hand, see politics as a series of practical ad hoc solutions. When the solutions don't work, the leader goes; if they don't do so gracefully, the knives see to it.

Given that the Conservative Party has seen six leaders in under 20 years, I can see his point.

I also think it's very relevant to the Maltese context. It would be premature and unfair to say anything about Joseph Muscat, but the history of his predecessors tells us that the PL is remarkably easy on its leaders. Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici was still at the helm well after 1987, and Alfred Sant could nuzzle up to party support even after we had lost count of the dog's dinners and lost elections.

Most Nationalists would not take too kindly to an accusation of ideological bankruptcy. And yet that's what they've been living, practising, and thoroughly enjoying for decades now.

Their party name is a vacant anachronism, they're not really conservative, and whether they're left, right, or centre is anybody's guess. When pressed, Nationalist leaders and party top brass will mumble something or other about 'values', typically 'Maltese', 'European', or 'traditional'. Whatever that means. The terms of reference, in other words, are vague.

Wonderfully so, in fact, for they effectively free the party to peddle a type of flexible issue politics that has also repeatedly proved successful with the electorate. There is, to be sure, a small and diminishing hard core of reactionary, largely Italianate, Nationalists, but their ideological influence within the party hasn't been remotely significant - at least since Fenech Adami became leader.

The Mintoff crisis of 1998 could never have happened to the blues, and the reason has nothing to do with the blamelessness of PN governments. For one, the PN has no 'father of the party' to whom to trace back its ideological roots. There are the Mizzis and all that, but they're long departed and most Nationalists have no idea what they stood for other than elaborate moustaches. Unlike Mintoff, whose conquests on the social equality front continue to define Labour's raison d'être.

Besides, no one could ever accuse the PN of 'losing its soul', simply because it is a very long time since the party withdrew its ambassadors from the land of the spiritual. The PN will never lose its soul, because it has no soul to lose. (I can hear the roar of the approaching values brigade). Just as well, since souls are expensive things to run.

Labour, on the other hand, continues to choose to be bogged down by ideology. I do not necessarily refer to practice. Contemporary party policies are in no way 'socialist' - at any rate they're only marginally different from their PN equivalent. Rather, I am thinking of a rhetorical commitment that still manages to take over the party's image at certain key points, such as the annual May 1 parade and the 'ghatuna x-xoghol' ('grant us work') Gensna waffle . Put simply, the face of the PL is still that of a 'partit tal-haddiema' ('a workers' party').

This is unfortunate, for it makes the PL fairly unelectable in a social context which is savagely aspirational and increasingly intolerant of ideology in general and leftist morality theatre in particular. There is some indication that Joseph Muscat may be shifting away from hammer-and-sickle anachronism and, at least in the interest of plurality, I can only wish him Godspeed.

Some might object that a shortage of ideology is a terrible thing in politics, and that politicians ought to be principled and motivated by ideals and coherent systems. I think this is nonsense. Certainly political belief and action should be related to ethics, but I don't see why one cannot apply these loosely and according to the case in question.

One doesn't need to commit oneself to a 'partit tax-xellug' (a leftist party), or to the Right, in order to take responsible decisions.

Ideology makes for inflexibility, triumphalism, and sanctimoniousness. It fosters an obsession with a glorious past, instead of a realistic approach to the practical present.

The reason the PN is so successful at talking about the present, and indeed the future, is because it has forgotten its moustaches and maduma. For some reason, Labour seems to find this a difficult task.

I started out by mentioning British politics and the ideological stubbornness of Labour. The fact that Labour there has been in government for over 10 years would seem to work against my subsequent argument. But for one factor called Tony Blair, who owes his success largely to his re-imaging of the party along issue politics lines. And who left when his time was up. If Blair could kick the socialist habit and rule happily after, why not the PL?

mafalzon@hotmail.com

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