The Valletta 2018 opening night was the biggest ever event in the history of the Labour Party. It was the moment at which the greatness of the party reached a historic high. There was a time when Labourites believed that, whatever they did, Nationalists did better. Not any more: Labour Pride is back, and Labourites know they can be as good as the others, if not better.

This, in sum, is what an ebullient-looking Prime Minister told a crowd at the Labour każin in Tarxien a week ago. (The morning after, that is.) As expected, his words were enthusiastically lapped up by a drove of party hacks. They included Karl Marx-lookalike Desmond Zammit Marmarà, who was on telly the other day swooning over Labour’s apotheosis. The reason why so many people had gone to Valletta, he said, was that they knew that government would not disappoint (“dal-gvern joħorġok ta’ nies”).

So far so predictable, except the Prime Minister did not talk about Labour at all. (I took the liberty to paraphrase.) Rather, his chosen opium of the people on this occasion was nationalism. Valletta 2018 was, according to him, a matter of national pride.

Funny, because the seven people I spoke to who were there on the night did not once mention nationalism. One was happy because they were given a free scarf, another loved the Triton Fountain, two were fans of DJ Tenishia, and the rest enjoyed the projections on the Cathedral. Now I know that seven non-randomly chosen subjects is not the height of in-depth research, but still, nationalism was nowhere on or between the lines.

The point has been made that the performances of the opening night were all spectacle and no culture, and that the acts lacked originality. In truth, none of the people in my sample complained; on the contrary, all said they thoroughly enjoyed the evening. That part of the story stops there as far as I’m concerned – it was never going to be fair to expect fifth-century Athens anyway.

Nor do I wish to rehearse a bread-and-circuses argument. By that currency, anything government did that had to do with spectacle or culture would be dismissed as a trick and a distraction. That would leave us with replies to parliamentary questions on the percentage of chlorine in drinking water, which wouldn’t do.

It’s the nationalism that bothers me – or, rather, the Prime Minister’s attempt to transmute culture into nation. While that’s hardly a world first, the alchemy requires a third ingredient: politics.

Let’s leave aside the con factor. (The people in that huge crowd were not there to glorify the nation but rather to enjoy the show.) The Prime Minister must think us naïve enough not to know that wherever it is and whatever it does, nationalism is never more than a few feet away from politics – in the case of Malta among other places, party politics.

When politicians talk about national pride, they are invariably talking about themselves

Take Ġensna, that other moment in history when national pride reached a high. Ġensna was about the prehistoric temples as a setting, the whims of a succession of foreign overlords, the suffering of the Maltese in the War, and such. Pure nationalism, then – except, just as Bombay Duck is actually a fish, Ġensna was really all about Labour. The clue is in what followed, which wasn’t terribly much a paragon of national unity.

In this case, the Prime Minister would like us to think that the size of the Valletta crowd was some kind of vote of confidence in, nay a celebration of, Labour in government. When politicians talk about national pride, they are invariably talking about themselves.

There’s another thing. It turns out that the Prime Minister’s appeal to nationalist fervour is impeccably timed. The rule of law/Egrant/Panama cause has moved from Amery Street and the steps of Castille, to Brussels. As I write, the headline in the Times of Malta reads, ‘Malta portrayed as a crooked country in MEP debate’. The photo shows David Casa sitting next to Ana Gomes, and opposite Joseph Muscat and the Maltese flag.

Whatever the value of Casa’s efforts, it would be exceptionally myopic not to see that this business of Malta in the dock in Brussels, and of a Maltese MEP testifying against it, rubs very many people the wrong way. Of half a dozen callers to a radio phone-in on the national station on Wednesday, not one missed the chance to diss Casa and the PN for telling on Malta (‘jugżawna lill-Brussels’) and sullying its good name.

Adrian Delia, who is not as stupid as Nationalists make him out to be, understands this mindset well. So well, in fact, that last week he told a newspaper that he would oppose any move by Brussels to suspend Malta’s voting rights in the EU. Delia seems keen to distance himself from the attack, by MEPs, on the Maltese government. Sadly for him, his leadership line is very sparsely toed.

All the while, Muscat is busy mining a very rich seam. “The Maltese will argue about many things, but when they see the red and white flag, they unite”, he went on to say in his national pride speech. He left it to us to add to that: “Except when they don’t, as with Casa and Co., boo to them”.

That national pride has its heroes and its villains is well known. What is perhaps less obvious is that it also has its casualties. In this case, a capital of culture drowned in a sea of triumphalism and artifice.

mafalzon@hotmail.com