This question may hold the key to the coming elections. The Leader of the Opposition wasted no time in pushing the term “progressive” as the flag behind which “left-leaning” reformers could rally. In fact, on becoming leader, he obtained from the Labour Party delegates a virtual blank cheque to appeal to all progressives to join in his understanding of a progressive social agenda.
Without doubt, his experience as a Euro MP must have driven him in this direction. The Party of Europ-ean Socialists has from 2009 adopted “A Progressive European Agenda” to create progressive societies.
Cleverly, he immediately branded the Nationalist Party as conservative in the apparent certainty he would be allowed to roam unopposed in the name of all progressives with more than a look at the liberal component of society. In line with this strategy, Joseph Muscat declared his intention to introduce divorce but only after the next election.
The strategy seemed to gain currency until the referendum campaign, when an obvious fact emerged: Malta’s two-party Parliament has the PN covering roughly the spectrum ranging from Blue Conservatives to Christian Democrats to Liberals while the PL would range from Social Demo-crats to Greens and Italian-style hard left.
Labour may have been surprised at the agility with which the various ideological streams within the PN gave life to a full-blooded, vibrant and certainly tense discussion on the border of confrontation within its structures on divorce. On the other hand, can it be doubted that the progressive agenda personified in Dr Muscat was imposed on the rest of the party, making internal dialogue on divorce seem lame if not a monologue? The virtual unanimity within the Labour Parliamentary Group when voting on the referendum and the divorce Bill seems out of tune with the complexity of views expressed by the Labour electorate at the referendum. Or is it not?
With the blurring of frontiers on the social agenda, the fundamental line of demarcation between the two parties must remain the function of the state. The progressives would still perceive the state as the motor for economic policy. Here they themselves draw a distinct line from the other two mainstream European ideologies, namely the Conservatives and the Liberals. “Conservatives and Liberals advocate cuts to public stimulus and would leave the unemployed jobless.”
By contrast, both the Conservatives and the Liberals want less of the state and more of a market economy. The Christian Demo-crats would agree, underlining “the person” as the fulcrum in the delicate balance between the state and capitalist market forces.
So, as in everything in the world of politics where things rarely are what they seem to be, the new developing political scenario may not be to Labour’s wishes. Dr Muscat had expressed himself clearly that he wanted to introduce divorce after the next election. This would have allowed him to stir clear of the state’s role, allowing him instead to lure the liberal vote on social matters. However, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s Private Member’s Bill changed all this.
A close look at the world, especially within the United States, shows us that our survival depends on the vital question of whether our economy may continue in weathering the storm by relying principally on the mixed economy model as the liberals, Christian Democrats would have it, or whether the state will be forced to debit itself to its soul and pay the bill later in the manner Gordon Brown’s Labour government was forced to do by the economic crisis.
On this, the PN seems on pole position with the government somehow managing to keep our market economy intact unlike that “bailed out” in most of the other Mediterranean countries.
No doubt, the liberal within us would say amen.
The liberal forces therefore are distinct from the progressives on issues that involve the governance of wealth and the resources of our country and, within our two-party political world, they are bound to confront each other electorally on opposing sides of the counter.