It’s plain that, although the score is almost the same, this election’s result is different from that of 2013. An electoral result isn’t just the numbers. It’s also the narrative that emerges, among voters and pundits, to make sense of them.  A narrative is just as raw or fundamental, and as open to massage, as numbers.

There is a politics of numbers. Strength in parliament, government stability, a prime minister’s audacity, the bandwagon effect... All these are shaped by numbers.

There is also a politics of narrative – the meaning that magnetises the numbers into a story we feel part of. Last time round, the result included the narrative that the Nationalists had it coming; that the second Gonzi government had been arrogant and out of touch; that the party had been unprincipled; that it had a lot to apologise for.

That narrative – in part spun by Labour – shaped the behaviour and strategic choices of the PN during its first couple of years in opposition.

It kept apologising profusely, which, instead of showing that the PN was in touch with the popular mood, suggested it was still looking back.

It decided not to defend and take advantage of the economic record of its period in government. Instead of showing the PN had moved on from the defeat, it enabled Joseph Muscat to claim he had engineered an economic miracle. He even had the nerve to accuse PN governments of economic incompetence.

The PN thus drifted into not reclaiming the socio-aspirational and economic clothes Muscat stole from it – ‘clothes’ that make up almost the entirety of the policy wardrobe that is Fehmiet Bażici, the PN’s most definitive statement of its basic policy and the principles informing it.

They are hardly marginal to the PN’s identity. Aspiration, education, meaningful work and mobility have informed the rhetoric of PN leaders for the better part of three decades. But it’s difficult to talk about them without linking up to the party’s achievements in government, including its last five years.

Not talking about such matters of value and principle didn’t just cede ground to Muscat. It also enabled his spin machine to shape how Simon Busuttil was perceived.

With a positive socio-economic vision not consistently in the foreground, Busuttil sounded different from former PN leaders – and it was easier for Muscat to spin that he was weak, carping and negative.

That, of course, was the image Muscat spun for Nationalist sympathisers. For voters who might be drawn to Busuttil from beyond the PN, he spun the opposite image: that Busuttil was vindictive and a snob who would always look down on the aspirational classes.

Nobody ever pointed out that there’s a contradiction between the two images. You’re either weak and indecisive or else you’re ready to wield power harshly. But the absence of a steadily articulated socio-economic vision helped Muscat project what he wanted onto Busuttil.

Muscat managed to turn the accusations of corruption into false accusations motivated by envy. That’s a moral accusation and a majority of people believed him

Finally, once socio-economic values – which are just as principled as any other – receded into the background, the foreground was occupied disproportionately by the PN parliamentary votes on sexual politics, like gay adoption.

Once more, the latter happened early in the parliament, over an issue where Busuttil was in the minority in his own party. He had hardly had time to establish himself when the vote came. The best he could muster was the group’s abstention. The image of indecision stuck, while the image of seeming out of touch was magnified.

Why go over all this now?

First, I believe that these critical decisions helped structure the battleground on which the 2017 election took place. Busuttil did speak of a socio-economic vision during the campaign, and outlined a vision for a digitalised open society – but it takes more than a four-week campaign for such things to displace a pre-set image.

Second, the decisions were taken very early. They seemed reasonable at the time. It seems easy to think them mistaken in hindsight. But when you’re taking such decisions, you depend on your gut because the consequences are complex and incalculable.

Your gut in turn is informed by your sense of what the electoral result meant. In retrospect, it now seems as though some of those decisions were informed by myth and Labour spin.

Hence why it’s important to battle against the myths already emerging about Saturday’s vote.

Four years ago, PN voters were shocked at the scale of the defeat but accepted the result. Many of them had been angry at the outgoing PN government themselves. They could see how they might have voted differently. They belonged to the same world as the “switchers” (at least until the sleaze burst the dykes).

Not so this week. Many PN voters aren’t just shocked. They’re angry at anyone who voted for Muscat and the suspected money-launderers around him. They feel they belong to a different world and culture. So they’re beginning to reach for explanations.

The most popular narrative is that Muscat appealed to a deeply ingrained amoralism in Maltese society. Both the numbers and Muscat’s rhetoric show that explanation doesn’t work. It’s a recipe for a fundamental misreading of the politics behind the vote.

Around 26 per cent of people who voted for Muscat, this time, voted for the PN at some point in the past. Which means that, at least once, they responded to appeals to the common good and to the benefits for future generations – against the appeals to individual self-interest that embodied several Labour campaigns. They weren’t ‘amoral’ then. Why now?

Second, Muscat has been very careful to deploy the rhetoric of morality. His machine has spent years positioning Busuttil as the unforgiving snob “who sees everyone as an ant”. In his victory speech, he made sure his supporters knew that, while he and Michelle Muscat, were the ones “most attacked”, he didn’t harbour grudges.

Yes, it’s only words. But he’s using them to appeal to people. And he’s appealing to their moral sense, not their amorality.

It’s a sense of indignation and injustice at social exclusion, borne of everyday experience. The anxious drama of feeling you don’t quite belong in a place or a social set, a feeling only incited by the hours of TV programming dedicated to complete makeovers, interior design, picture-perfect food and raising children.

Lines of social exclusion are always moral. They’re always justified by the idea of what people deserve. They’re animated by the search for social salvation and avoidance of humiliation.

Muscat has harnessed that status anxiety – typical of a very mobile society – and politicised it. He managed to turn the accusations of corruption into false accusations motivated by envy. That’s a moral accusation, too. And a majority of people believed him.

People didn’t ‘vote for corruption’, even if they voted for the Panama gang. They just didn’t believe the accusations. They believed the accusers were immoral and dirty.

None of this means that we should pay no attention to the conduct of the electoral campaign itself: Labour’s riches, acquired off public property like Australia Hall, and Labour’s blatant abuse of government data and funds to micro-target voters. In fact, the abuse needs serious post-electoral scrutiny.

But let’s not generate new myths, masquerading as explanations, to replace the ones that arose in 2013.

ranierfsadni@europe.com

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