“One-track conformism” in the UK had made it easier for Tony Blair to proceed in his folly. Photo: Reuters/Lucy Nicholson

The evocative term ‘one-party state of mind’ was coined by the late Hugo Young (1938-2003), dean of British political commentators, the greatest liberal pundit of his age, in a column published in The Guardian on October 29, 2002. He used it to describe the state of Britain after five and a half years of government by Tony Blair and I find it helpful in thinking about Malta in 2014.

Although Young’s column was called ‘The one-party State’, he did not mean that democracy had been lost or that Blair wielded illegitimate power. Only a year before, Blair had been re-elected with another massive parliamentary majority; the difference in seats between Labour and the total sum of the rest of the political parties was bigger than the number of seats the Conservative Party had won. Voters clearly wanted Blair.

Neither was Young saying that successive electoral wins by the same party transforms a polity into a one-party State. If political parties can be freely formed, if elections are regular and free, if debate is lively and governments are accountable, then it’s a liberal democracy – even if, as in the case of Sweden in the mid-20th century, the same political party rules for decades with scarcely an interruption.

Nor was Young coining a fancy term to replace an older phrase, ‘natural party of government’, which, in the 20th century, the Conservatives had been in the UK. When Young was writing, other European states had natural parties of government – say, the Social Democrats in Sweden, the Christian Democrats in Luxembourg – but he identified the one-party State of mind as an ‘unhealthy, ultimately repellent, national condition, not found in any other Western democracy’.

Young was referring to a state of mind where, given the unlikelihood of a change of government for the foreseeable future, the entire establishment, in politics, business and intellectual life, was in the government’s grip, “for reasons of opportunism or comfort or idleness”.

The specific target of Young’s invective was the BBC. Some time before, its governing board appointed Greg Dyke as director general. Dyke had donated £50,000 to Labour: only a few years before, this act would have disqualified him from the post but this time it was a non-issue.

Young argued that the idea that Blair was unchallenged meant the BBC’s impartiality itself was being made to seem irrelevant. To exercise impartiality between alternatives, one needs a real choice.

Young’s eye, however, was also on the looming future. By the autumn of 2002, it was already evident that Blair wanted to endorse the US decision to invade Iraq. Young was one of those predicting the disaster that would ensue. But it turned out that the “one-track conformism” in the UK made it easier for Blair to proceed in his folly.

Young was clear. The one-party state of mind isn’t something that’s bad only for opposition parties. It can have seriously bad consequences for the political party that benefits from it, as well as for some of its core supporters. Young was himself contemptuous of the Tories and had had high hopes for Blair.

Nor was he laying the blame for this debilitating state of mind only on the beneficiaries. The Tories’ bitter internal feuds and out-of-touch stands cleared the way for Blair’s domination.

How applicable is Young’s analysis to Malta today? In one obvious sense, it’s premature to diagnose a one-party state of mind after only 14 months of Labour government.

Yes, Labour seems to rule alone. Some of its decisions have been unpopular but they do not seem to have left an enduring impact on its lead in the polls. Various segments of the establishment behave as though there is only one pole of power to consider for the foreseeable future.

A healthy polity is one in which the ideals for which one enters politics remain in touch with the art of what’s possible

But that’s also what one would expect things to look like 14 months after any smashing electoral victory, especially when a party long out of power enters government. New governments are often Teflon governments, able to blame what goes wrong on the predecessors and to take credit for anything good that happens. People are generally more forgiving. It takes an economic cycle, at least 18 months, for blame to begin to stick.

In another sense, however, ‘the one-party state of mind’ is a useful concept. It identifies a condition, a democratic disease. Having identified it, we can keep a sharper look-out for telltale symptoms.

It helps fend off the silliness of the belief that Malta has a natural party of government. Anyone who ever might have believed that the Nationalist Party was that party has long sobered up. But it is still common to come across the converse idea: that Labour is Malta’s natural party of government.

The most public populariser of that theory was Lou Bondí, who raised it for discussion on his TV programme not too long ago. The theory goes that the PN only wins elections when the country is in crisis; in normal times, Labour wins.

It’s a lovely theory if you’re a Nationalist trying to rationalise defeat: the PN always works to make this a normal country and, therefore, always works selflessly to bring about its own defeat.

It only works, however, by being very selective about what counts as crisis.

It ignores that, in 1971, 1996 and 2013, Labour worked up, and rode on, a (highly particular) sense of crisis, too.

In each case, it won votes from significant segments that had not voted for it previously.

Young’s idea of a one-party state of mind spares us these contortions. It enables us to see how, for some cases, it is possible to have a situation where one particular party’s hegemony seems natural, even though it cannot lay claim to a natural majority.

He helps us see the process by which this state comes about and how the Opposition and civil society can be complicit in it. It’s when the usual balance in politics – between conviction and practical responsibility – becomes upset.

A healthy polity is one in which the ideals for which one enters politics remain in touch with the art of what’s possible. One critical symptom of a one-party state of mind is that ideals and convictions become divorced from pragmatism.

On the one hand, oppositions become obsessed with principle and ideological purity.

The more they believe they cannot win the next election, the more heated and schismatic the internal debates become – since nothing else really seems to count. In doing so, they clear the way for their adversary to dominate them.

Meanwhile, on the other hand, governments lose all sight of why they wanted the power to begin with. They become obsessed with winning and keeping power for its own sake.

It’s a temptation that also paralyses autonomous authorities and civil society organisations. Faced with no serious political alternative, the arguments for ‘quiet influence’, from the inside, seem more pragmatic than principled challenge and resistance to anything they disagree with. It’s never opportunistic, of course, but somehow it’s always opportune.

As Young showed, it is in this way that democratic culture is undermined. Parliament comes to be seen as irrelevant. And democracy’s civic monitors find mobilising activity futile.

We may not be there yet. Let’s hope we never are. We would all be losers.

ranierfsadni@europe.com