Nationalist leader Simon Busuttil dedicated part of the speech he delivered in his party’s public meeting on the Fosos to attempt to answer the question: what type of party does the PN want to be in order to be able to work effectively towards realising the modern society the average Maltese citizen wants to be part of.
Undoubtedly, this is a difficult question to answer, but the sheer fact that Busuttil has publicly attempted to answer it reflects his awareness of the need for the PN to be reinvented and become once again a relevant political force in Maltese society.
Briefly, Busuttil answered the question he had asked himself by outlining his vision of the PN as a political force that rises to every challenge; including the one that calls for its reinvention to become a political force that believes in equal opportunities for all while safeguarding the common interest, a secular party that follows principles and values that are interpreted within the context of today’s society and that looks forward to the future while basing its action on honest evaluation of situations and being consistent in what it says and does in practice.
Nice words. Tall order.
The situation that the PN finds itself today after the debacle of the 2013 general election, and repeated, by and large, in this year’s European Parliament election, has an uncanny resemblance with that faced by the British Labour Party after its two electoral drubbings at the hand of the Iron Lady, the inimitable Margaret Thatcher.
In his autobiography – The Third Man – Peter Mandelson, who was New Labour’s guru and spin doctor, explains that after its first electoral defeat the party had changed its leader but not its political stance.
Mandelson realised that in spite of many voters having a “visceral dislike” for Thatcher they nevertheless felt she was acting strong and that there was no alternative. One of the big problems was the impulse that led many in Labour to adopt the default position that they must be against whatever the Conservatives were for.
“The problem”, as Mandelson puts it, “was that a modern relevant Labour Party could not operate on atavistic instinct. We could not make a policy on the simple basis that everything that the Tory government – a comfortably re-elected Tory government – did was wrong.
“That risked not just failing to take on board policies that might be right, but could leave us opposing policies of far greater benefit to our own voters than anything we were offering.”
After Thatcher’s second victory, Mandelson embarked on an investigation – through a public opinion agency – of the state of mind of Britain’s voters: what they valued in their lives and in government, why they supported one party or another and what had convinced them, or might convince them, to switch sides.
Even though, over two decades, Labour’s share of the vote had fallen by 20 per cent, more than a quarter of the party’s shrinking base said they kept voting Labour only out of residual loyalty.
Busuttil needs to be more forceful and impose himself over those that keep holding him back as they do not realise they are still in a state of denial
In Britain, the Labour Party was “becoming less and less popular, less and less relevant”, while there was a whispering campaign against its leader, Neil Kinnock. This was the situation that eventually saw the birth of Tony Blair’s ‘New Labour’. The rest is history.
There are many lessons to be drawn from this story. It is obvious that Joseph Muscat emulated these events when he took over the leadership of the MLP – now the Labour Party – in 2008, while the PN stuck doggedly to its old line, continually refusing to listen to the warning signs and ignoring what the electorate was saying.
Now it is time for the PN not only to realise how its incredible lack of empathy with the electorate’s wishes and aspirations brought its historically huge downfall; it must do much more.
Unfortunately, within the PN there are still those who believe that the 2013 election result was simply the result of the electorate being duped by Muscat’s promises and that all the PN needs to do is to sit back, vehemently oppose whatever this administration does and just wait for the chickens to come home to roost.
This is not just pie in the sky; it is an attitude that can only lead to the PN becoming more irrelevant with an ever weakening base.
Busuttil realises this and has launched what should be a silent revolution that leads to the reinvention of the PN and to its finding its relevant place in the Maltese society of the second half of the current decade.
Busuttil knows what is needed. He needs to be more forceful and impose himself over those that keep holding him back as they do not even realise they are still in a state of denial. He has to be wary of them.
He has already been their victim when he opted for Opposition MPs abstaining from the vote on the civil unions bill.
His speech at Floriana a week ago signifies that he is determined not to let the situation slip out of his hands.
micfal@maltanet.net