While the jury is out scrutinising the details and precedents of Labour’s energy policy, it’s worth remembering that this is not the first general election in which Labour made a major promise on utility bills. In 2008, it proposed something that could have been a game-changer but which ended up almost ignored.
Waving EU flags and rhetoric at Labour meetings has been a more difficult achievement than meets the eye- Ranier Fsadni
The promise then was to subsidise utility bills to the tune of 50 per cent. That promise was made at the beginning of the year, when it seemed that oil prices would reach $200 per barrel by December (although, in fact, they peaked at around $150, just before the unexpected economic cataclysm in late summer). The potential financial gain for middle-class households was huge.
Yet, even though it promised more to the affluent electoral middle-ground than it did to the less well-off, it remained a relatively minor issue. The attention was hogged by the ‘repeater’ class proposal and by concerns that Labour was still too sceptical about EU membership to be trusted with its stewardship. It was practically the same people who signed up to the Labour utility pledge in 2008 who are making a utility pledge now. Although the promise is now one of reducing (not subsidising) bills by 25 per cent (with oil not expected to top much more than $100 per barrel by the end of the year), it’s attracting much more attention.
Indeed, although it’s still too early to be sure, the pledge could turn out to be a game-changer. If Labour convinces, the election is in the bag. A Louis Vuitton bag, stuffed with a historic majority.
If the PN can convince people, however, that this is yet another Labour promise that flies in the face of reality, it could become this election’s ‘repeater’ class. With Tonio Fenech taking on the role played by Louis Galea last time.
Aspiring middle-class families, struggling with bills, will be made anxious that the unaffordable promise will make their struggle even more precarious. They will believe Labour’s pledge is really a gamble that could burden the country with debts that require major cuts in state spending on education, health and job protection.
Why is the issue playing such a different role this year? It may look like finally technocratic issues are dislodging rank politics. But it’s mainly due to two political achievements, one by the Nationalist Party, the other by Labour.
First, the PN achievement.
The fact that in the middle of a European economic crisis, which may well get worse before it gets better, we are debating whether our bills can go down by a quarter shows how much the storm has largely passed us by. And while governments have limited control over economies, some credit for avoiding the worst needs to go to the decision-makers. They had choices and, economically, they largely went for the right ones.
Second, however, the utility promise can take centre stage this time because Labour has managed to take the EU issue out of the equation. Waving EU flags and rhetoric at Labour meetings has been a more difficult achievement than meets the eye.
Let us remember that, as recently as the 2008 Labour leadership election, being thought to have been pro-EU membership was considered, within the PL, to show highly dubious loyalty. George Abela, Joseph Muscat’s main rival for the Labour leadership, had to struggle to show how being Labour and being pro-EU membership went together.
A photograph of Abela’s daughter attending, a few years earlier, one of the pro-EU meetings, was anonymously circulated to undermine his campaign. That’s how toxic the issue still was a mere four and a half years ago.
It’s evidence of a great deal of hard work that, now, Labour can campaign on rhetoric that bear-hugs the EU. To Muscat goes much of the credit. But we would be missing a lot if we ignored the role that people like Anġlu Farrugia had to play.
His part in the first few years of Muscat’s leadership has been, I think, underestimated. It’s been generally forgotten how he won the deputy leadership contest.
The party delegates had rejected him decisively for the same post 10 years earlier.
They rejected him again, as leader, in 2003. Why did they change their mind in 2008, especially when the Farrugia-Toni Abela tandem received no special benediction?
The feeling in the PL at the time was that Farrugia (with Abela) was a useful counterbalance to Muscat. Fences still needed to be fixed with certain segments of ‘old Labour’. He was someone who could reassure – even as the party changed some of its most emotionally charged symbols and rhetoric, while donning the colour of the detested adversary – that the party’s heart was unchanged.
It’s a mark of how safe that segment of Labour’s support is now that Muscat can feel he can wax forth about the EU being ‘the people’s achievement’ while axing Farrugia in the face of snide middle-class mockery.
And that’s how the deck has been cleared to make way for an election in which a seemingly technocratic argument about utility bills can take centre stage. It’s not despite the politicians but, rather, because of hard work by leaders on both sides of the divide. We would be naive to think it can ever be different.
ranierfsadni@europe.com