Our jet-setting Prime Minister (if it’s Monday, it must be Beijing) was in London to talk about the Commonwealth. Just for the education of the more youthful among my readership, the Commonwealth is a remnant of the British Empire, a conglomeration of colonies of Her Majesty’s forebears upon which the sun never set. We were a part of it, until Independence, the 50th anniversary of which will be celebrated this year when Her Majesty’s granddaughter-in-law, the Babe Middleton, will come among us to dispense gorgeous smiles and evoke images of her sister sashaying down the aisle at her wedding to the Queen’s grandson.
I don’t think La Middleton will be wielding an electric guitar, that noble task will be left to someone else. She probably won’t be referring to the other anniversaries that are being celebrated this year at such expense that we can’t be having local council elections for about 50 years or so.
After all, what with rock concerts to celebrate the 23rd anniversary of a lease running out, having to pay Sai Mizzi Liang, wife of super minister Konrad ‘Shame on You’ Mizzi and having to ensure that the great unwashed got to see Joseph Calleja for free again, there are limits on the extent to which the public purse can be stretched and something has to give.
What better sacrifice to be made, then, then chucking an element of the democratic process out of the pram? Our Chinese collaborators must be proud of our government, it’s learning its lessons well, and quickly. We’ll be shutting down the internet some time soon.
Joseph Muscat demonstrated his usual deft touch while laying down the law about the Commonwealth and its future at the London School of Economics.
Apparently, the Commonwealth is terminally ill and imitates nothing more than a patient lying moribund in his hospital bed, waiting to be diagnosed definitively. How much this is true is not up for discussion, given that when Muscat says something, it is taken as being inscribed on the tablets, at least by our media.
The Prime Minister exposes himself as being stuck in a rut about what the governance of a country means
How much anyone, except for the people who were in the audience, actually give much of a monkey’s about the state of the Commonwealth is itself debatable, if anyone were able to get up enough energy to care. Apart from the people who earn a living coordinating cultural exchanges and similar initiatives, good and worthy as such things are, who would notice if the Commonwealth were to roll over and play dead?
Seriously, what is the point of the Commonwealth, now that you think about it? The European members, to wit us and the Brits, have the EU to concentrate on when it comes to preferential fiscal and trade deals (until such time as Nigel Farage prevails and the Brits leave, anyway) and when it comes to cultural exchanges, is there much of this going on?
Taking us and our new-found cultural identity with China as a fr’instance, it would seem that there’s not much, at all, and it will be less than slightly missed if it were to take on aspects of Monty Python’s parrot. What’s left? Ah, yes, human rights and other noble souvenirs of British hegemony. We have them, for now, anyway (voting in a democratic environment and an independent judiciary might be about to be dispensed with but, for now, we have them) but not all members of the Commonwealth do, by a long shot.
Being in the Commonwealth allows us to hob-nob with Canada, New Zealand and Australia, for what that’s worth, though any clout we have with these places arises more from the fact that there are more of us there than there are here, I suspect. So really, why do we bother?
This reflection was brought on by the reports of the way the Prime Minister spoke to his audience last Monday. I hadn’t actually thought about membership of the Commonwealth this way before, not least of the reasons for this being that the Commonwealth is Anglo-centric and the direction of my sympathies is well known in this regard.
But when the host of CHOGM (that’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting) himself, having stepped in at the eleventh hour to stump up for the cost of having the meeting here again, gee thanks, another reason not to pay for local council elections (or anti-hunting referenda), spreads a good dollop of gloom and doom about the future of the institution, who am I, a mere citizen, not to take up his refrain?
The Prime Minister will, he promised, be making some suggestions to promote curing the Commonwealth of its various and varied ills, which must have caused Her Majesty to heave heavy enough sighs of relief to blow out Prince George’s quċċija party candles (it’s said he chose a crown out of the array of baubles, wonder why?).
Muscat also took the opportunity, always according to the reports I read, to strew about some remarks about republicanism and about how it was anathema for people of his generation to have foreign heads of State and suchlike.
I am worried about this sort of remark. Not because I hanker for the days when we were ruled by Whitehall, though that was preferable to being ruled from L-Għarix by Muscat’s hero and inspiration, Dom Mintoff, but because these things being so important to our Prime Minister betray him as being stuck in a rut about what the governance of a country means.
In this day and age, it is a given that we are an independent State: we have been since, duh, Independence, which was in 1964 (hence the plethora of rock concerts celebrating its 50th) and everything that has flowed since then has been a direct and unimportant (except for joining the EU) consequence of that event. It’s no longer up for discussion, period.
By referring back to the idea of colonialism and forms of government that are utterly alien to us in 2014, Muscat is doing little except rekindling sentiments among his soldiers of steel about how important it is to get rid of Johnny Foreigner (vide the inane comments about how much better the bus service is now that we’ve got rid of the outsiders) presumably in a bid to make them forget that it is a central plank of our government’s policy to make nice to the Middle Kingdom.
Just a note about humorous sallies, since it seems that our Premier labours under the impression that he’s a bit of a stand-up comic in the British tradition.
When you make jokes about how something is “unthinkable”, England winning the World Cup isn’t the right image to invoke. To start with, it is not “unthinkable” for England to win the darn thing, inconceivable, nigh on impossible, perhaps, but not unthinkable: the English think it’s possible every four years, only to crash and burn every time.
And making supposed funnies about a nation’s team while in the country itself isn’t, actually, funny.
Using irony and self-deprecation is one thing, being snide and insulting quite another, especially when most people in the sort of audience that Muscat had a) don’t really care about soccer, this being the chavs’ game and b) have no idea why the Prime Minister of a sovereign country should have any opinion on another country’s footy team.
The whole world doesn’t share our obsession with supporting either England or Italy, as anyone who lives outside our own version of the Valley of the Po knows.
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http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/author/20