I sometimes despair of Joseph Muscat’s Labour Party, though this is probably as nothing compared to the despair that will be visited on us if they get given the keys to Castille in however many years’ time.

I mean, for Heaven’s sake, who in the name of all that’s beautiful gave him the idea that focusing on the middle class is a good one? Leaving aside the fact that the Labour Party, duh, is supposed to be the workers’ party (there’s a hint in the name) and, therefore, if you’ll forgive some slight exaggeration for effect, the sworn enemy of the bourgeois middle class, is it supposed to be some sort of major aspiration to become part of the middle class?

I suppose a party that has had as its very raison d’être a particularly virulent strain of class envy would be prone to using class as a hook on which to plonk its bait but are Labour so desperate to be all things to all men they have to resort to the grey and anonymous “middle class” to try to appeal to as many voters as possible?

I’ve just noticed, incidentally, that I’ve started the first four paragraphs in the first person: Not a bad little megalomaniac, am I? Must be the fact I’m writing about Dr Muscat, who really does think he’s the bee’s knees, after all.

But let’s get back to the middle class, shall we, the class to which we all aspire to belong, at least according to Dr Muscat? I really do have to ask why is the Labour Party touting the grey and anonymous middle class as the standard against which the country is to be measured? I’ve nothing against the middle class per se, I’m very likely slap-bang in the middle of it, which must make me middle, middle class.

Boring, or what? I have plenty against some aspirant members of the middle class (hummers at the opera, eaters at restaurants who don’t have a volume-control on themselves or on their kids, drivers for whom discipline is a mere inconvenience, to be avoided at all time) but it is of the very essence of the class that it is innocuous, anodyne, vanilla and – well, I’m darned if I’m going to dig out a thesaurus at this time of night, you get my drift, I’m sure.

This having been aired, I have to ask: Why does a workers’ movement risk losing its soul by becoming the champion of Mr and Mrs Everyman and their two point five children? Not that the Labour Party of old, at least in its Mintoffian and post-Mintoffian incarnations, actually had much of a soul to speak of, though to listen to the amnesiac revisionists, if it wasn’t for the Malta Labour Party the workers would be enslaved for all eternity, their souls sold to the company store with no redemption.

It is, actually, quite sad the Labour Party is evidently run by a bunch of comfortably-off, adequately well-educated professionals who can’t call themselves upper class and have to camouflage their own aspirations by making the creation of a new middle class the battle cry of their so-called Movement of Progressive Moderates.

If you think the paragraph before this is confused and unenlightening, reflect on this: It is an attempt to crystallise the Labour Party’s philosophy and my complete failure to manage this demonstrates one stark fact.

That is: Labour does not have a philosophy. They want to win the next election and if it means appealing to the middle class, then by George, they will or bust a gut trying. Don’t take my word for it, consider the evidence. On every issue, they vacillate, not daring to come down on any side, lest they annoy the other one. Pro-environment or pro-hunting, pro-divorce or anti, fireworks yes or fireworks no?

Your guess is as good as mine, frankly.

Congratulations are due to the people behind the Festival Mediterranea, organised by the St George’s guys in Gozo. We attended two events: La Traviata, which we enjoyed enormously, and a tour of the Hypogeum, led by David Trump, which was a fantastic opportunity to go there, the last time we’d been being way before the major refurbishment. You must go, it’s an amazing place. We went on the tour on Tuesday, hedonistically taking a morning off to do so and we continued in tourist mode to take in the Pipes Exhibition in Palazzo Falson, which you also have to do. A light lunch at Fontanella ended the proceedings rather nicely.

You do these things and you realise there are reasons for tourists to come here, after all.

Back to the opera; great stuff, well worth such a supreme effort.

imbocca@gmail.com

www.timesofmalta.com/blogs

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