Moderate and/or progressive

The other day an Italian researcher wrote to ask me why the 'Nationalist Party of Malta' was pro-EU and not particularly given to bashing migrants and wearing swastikas. I told her the word 'Nationalist' had no real meaning in this case, that it was just a distant historical memory. Unlike the Movement for Moderates and Progressives which, being newborn, deserves to have its nomenclature dissected.

Let's start with 'moderate'. A 'moderate' party is a middle-of-the-road type. Neither right nor left, it avoids radical positions and seeks to be acceptable to as many people as possible, whatever their convictions. Since it has no clear ideology, it is free to conduct a type of flexible issue-politics.

The PN became such a party when Eddie Fenech Adami declared that Labour had no God-given line to the working class. The issue politics that followed (pro-social welfare, pro-free market, pro-EU, etc.) sold well and has kept the party in power since the time 'mobile' was an English word that meant 'movable'. All the talk of timeless values and principles was just waffle which didn't really keep people off the imported chocolate.

This is probably one of the things Joseph Muscat has in mind. His constant appeals to 'the middle-class', 'all people of goodwill', and so on, show that he wants to be free to conduct issue politics. He will be aware that he has to tread very carefully indeed to avoid rubbing the old leftie guard the wrong way.

In the case of Labour especially, 'moderate' means a second thing. Memories of the turbulent 1970s and 1980s have long dogged the party. Alfred Sant managed to appease the spirit but many who lived those times are still afraid of Labour. Muscat will now want to exorcise it entirely. He will try to put as much distance between himself and some of his ancestors, whose speciality was to keep people guessing what the next dare would be. The message is that moderate is safe, and that Labour can be trusted not to cause too many tremors.

On to the second bit, 'progressive'. This is probably more complicated since it can mean so many different things, according to context. It can mean, for example, a sort-of-philosophical (and old-fashioned) belief that progress is an inevitable character of the human condition, and that wars, recessions and things are simply temporary distractions. This view typically privileges mind ('rationality') over spirit ('superstition', i.e. religion) and predicts that the first will ultimately sweep away the second and rule happily ever after.

I don't think Muscat has this in mind. By 'progressive' I suppose he means a party that is committed to social reform and that is not afraid to try out new devices to achieve that. At least that's what he implied in last week's christening speech.

Not that it was without its surreal moments. To say that 'women are equal by right', for example, or that 'gay people are not sick in any way', is hardly cutting-edge. It's a bit like saying the earth's not terribly flat. Highly progressive in ancient China, but extremely trite and retrograde today anywhere outside an isolated farmhouse in Mississippi. Ideas are not progressive because they are about women and gays, but because they are new.

But let's not be too hard on Muscat. After all, he's hardly the only one out there peddling thoughts taken straight out of that isolated farmhouse. Nor is he the worst culprit of the trade.

The real problem, as always, is marriage. I know a guy who is just about as nice and decent as it gets. And yet, the minute he tied the knot with a lady who's also really nice and decent, things went pear shaped. These friends of mine were great as long as they stayed single, miserable as a couple. They were, quite simply, incompatible.

Likewise, Mr Moderate and Ms Progressive do not conjoin very well. I dare say by definition, as follows. Being who she is, Ms Progressive likes to try out new things (no funny thoughts please, the Police Commissioner's vetting). She has no time for established truths and is ready to pay any price to change things according to her ideals. She wants the walls painted a bright red and the kitchen in fuchsia, among other innovations.

Alas, this won't do for her new partner. Being moderate, he prefers to play it safe and is not willing to take risks. He's just bought some magnolia paint and word has it his carpenter is under strict orders to work in conventional cherry. Divorce (sorry, annulment - Ms Progressive has been diagnosed Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) is inevitable.

The trouble with Muscat's plan is that he's chosen two words that may make sense individually but as a couple are, quite simply, incompatible. Take divorce as an example. Refreshingly, he's said he's personally in favour of legalising it. He thinks it's a basic civil right and he's decided he doesn't want to dodge it by talking, as the Prime Minister does, about 'strengthening the family'. That's because he wants Labour to be progressive, and that's also why I wish to congratulate him for his honesty.

But he's also moderate, damn it, which means he doesn't want to take risks or to look bad either way. Remember, moderate is middle-of-the-road, bland, and safe. So, if and when the time comes to 'get down to business', he will call a free vote - on something he has said is an essential civil right.

The result will be a disaster. Divorce won't happen (if Muscat thinks an PN opposition will oblige him by its own free vote, he must be dreaming) and we will never make progress on this particular civil right front.

It's really very simple. Being progressive means being for social reform. Inevitably, any act of social reform is welcomed by some and abhorred by others. The former will love, the latter hate you, and you will not be seen as moderate.

If Mintoff and Fenech Adami had been moderate, men and women would still be on unequal pay, Malta's EU application would still be in the freezer, and both politicians would be all but forgotten.

mafalzon@hotmail.com