Anything that brings together ritual, sweaty palms and corned beef must be worth a divertissement. First, meetings. The way they have changed is quite impressive. To be sure, the premise was always that all the world’s a stage. Pageantry and spectacle were as essential to meetings then as they are now. Still, there are telling differences.
Take content. Up until the 1980s, the reasons why people went to meetings included to actually listen to what the speakers had to say. Newspapers aside, the only direct access to the party message was the political meeting. Content mattered, and speeches by party leaders would often go on for over an hour.
That would be both unthinkable and pointless at a time in which it is impossible to bunker effectively against a constant bombardment by text message, billboard, internet, television and radio. We have come to a point at which the ring of the party message is a sort of tinnitus – present even when it isn’t. In such circumstances, content suffers from serious inflation and risks losing its value.
Which is why the parties have come up with a substitute for the content-rich, extended speech. Political events generally and meetings in particular have become ritualised. They proceed according to a fixed formula by which people perform standardised and repetitive actions. Speeches, for example, are increasingly sloganised (and slogans are ritual speech).
The liturgy of meetings is made possible in a number of ways. Certainly technology – giant screens, floodlights and such – matters, which is why a cash-strapped party is also one that suffers from ritual deficit disorder. The congregation is attended to by an army of ritual specialists in the shape of party minions who wear identification tags and ear pieces.
They are the devices that establish the wearers as a priesthood that will enact exactly what is ordained from above. The ritual of party meetings is not the organic variety found in home and roadside shrines. Rather, it is the cathedral kind that follows a script written by an all-powerful centre.
By his own admission, Muscat is savagely aspirational
In fact, the other way in which the obsessive ritualisation of politics has become possible is through ever-increasing centralisation. The party machine decides which slogans, flags, placards and T-shirts the congregation will wear. Nothing is left to chance, and anything that departs from the formula is sanctioned by popular disapproval (and on occasion the party itself).
And yet there is a key contradiction. Even as the parties consolidate, centralise and ritualise, they do so in a context that is fickle, volatile and resists those very things. I have no way of saying which way it will go as I write this, but it appears that at the very least there has been a considerable swing away from the Tagħna Lkoll Labour of 2013. Also, and as in the case of the last years of the Gonzi government, there have been important defections.
Second, sweaty palms. There have been two Joseph Muscats: the first, the super-confident and slick talker who proved so convincing in 2013, the second, a sullen and ill-at-ease serial dodger of journalists and interviews who would openly sulk when cornered by the wrong people.
The Xarabank debate was very telling in this respect. As he bumbled through his stock phrases, Muscat was visibly nervous and a different person to the one we were accustomed to. His comments on Busuttil’s sweaty palms, which could have sounded nasty, in fact came across as pathetic. No wonder he subsequently turned down requests for interviews by two English-language newspapers.
The reasons why Muscat has been so edgy of late are a mixture of the obvious and the telling. Certainly the endless rounds of campaigning would take their toll on anyone. Nor can it be easy to have to defend the indefensible for so long, or to watch a wave of popular support subside to something considerably less surfable in such a short span of time.
There is, however, something else. What really matters to Muscat is the type, rather than the quantity, of support he has lost. (He is still the favourite to win, after all.) I have at least 10 people in mind who have said they voted Labour in 2013 but won’t be doing so again. They are all the kind that Muscat likes to mix with, except none of them take him seriously anymore.
In 2008, in his very first speech as Labour leader, Muscat set out the part of his biography that mattered. He described himself as one of humble origins who had done well – as things eventually turned out, very well indeed. By his own admission, Muscat is savagely aspirational. I’m not saying there’s anything the matter with that. I’m just saying.
It follows that it means a lot to him personally, to be seen with and be taken seriously by the right people; ‘right’ in this case means the kind of society that matches his aspirations. Clearly, Muscat’s role means that he also and often has to mix with the kind of society that doesn’t – Labour’s core supporters, in other words. He may go through the motions, but it is amply clear he derives no pleasure from it.
That’s because the real bliss is elsewhere. That it has been in short supply of late is a disaster for Muscat. He takes it personally, and it comes across in his composure (or lack of it). Thus the loss of cool.
Third, corned beef. I’m intrigued at the gifts some candidates came up with. The value of a pen, keychain or card wallet was that recipients would be stuck with an image and a name. Handy if you’re trying to convince them to choose yours from a list of names. On the other hand, wine, corned beef and hot cross buns are perishable – once consumed they’re gone, and with them the names. So is the new kind of gift a stupid idea?
Not necessarily. A French philosopher once said that food was a relation between people. It’s as if constituents are being roped into an act of commensality. The minute you mix in the corned beef and the pasta, a new relationship is born or an old one consolidated. That, and you can always keep the key as a memento.
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