Adrian Delia’s ascent to the leadership of the Nationalist Party is being discussed, by his champions and dismayed Nationalist supporters alike, in terms of who he will bring to (or repel from) the party at the next general election. But what will the general election bring him?
Against which scenario will he be fighting the election? It’s pointless discussing him as though he’s the only variable. General elections are never static.
It’s little better to say, as his supporters do, that Delia offers the PN the best chance of winning the next election. They usually have in mind Delia’s undoubted appeal to lower middle-class and working-class voters, especially among Nationalist supporters, not least in the southern electoral districts.
The latter’s desertion of the PN in the last general election was key to the landslide defeat. Even among those who remained, a simmering resentment at certain strategic or tactical decisions remains.
Delia’s campaign targeted these voters. He emphasised the risk of poverty and equality. He used a dog-whistle to signal that a Delia government would take care of its own. Above all, he behaved like a tribune of the people, ever ready to talk, drink and rib like one of them.
The wager is that it might be enough in five years, after 14 years of Joseph Muscat, to make inroads even among Labour’s ‘pale red’ segments.
That, at any rate, is the conviction of some in Delia’s camp, who are optimistic that the pale red votes gained will outnumber the erstwhile Nationalists repulsed by the unanswered questions about Delia’s business affairs.
All this, however, assumes a static background. It’s a scenario that replays the 2017 election, while simply changing the PN leader. The 2022 election will obviously be different.
Simplifying, there are only two broad scenarios against which the PN can win the next general election: the catastrophe scenario and the change-the-elite scenario.
The catastrophe scenario features a big economic crash, whether it’s a bubble bursting or a series of smaller bursts with a cumulative impact.
It cannot be small enough for Labour to be able to throw money at it in the short term. Nor can it be small enough so that a politician, like Delia, who has promised to shut down passport sales, comes to be seen as an aggravating economic threat: someone who will add to the slowdown by threatening to cut off a vital source of income that could stimulate recovery.
It has to be a big crash. In which case, it will have cascading effects, given the Labour government’s irresponsibility in governing without a thought for rainy days.
Unless Delia has the same cold temperament, he’ll soon find he’s a folk hero who belongs to folklore, not contemporary society
If it’s a big crash, then Delia will almost certainly win the election. But then, practically anyone could win such an election – possibly even the leaders of the 2015 anti-spring hunting campaign. The second scenario seems likelier today. Here, people are generally content with how things are going but, for various reasons, think that Labour needs a break from governing. The corruption, the cronyism, the arrogance – all this, finally, leads enough voters to think that a change of management, if a reliable replacement can be found, is desirable.
It’s happened before. Muscat himself made key inroads, while still in Opposition, by reassuring people they could get rid of the Nationalists but keep their policies.
But precisely because Labour’s done this itself, it is acutely aware of the danger. Even while Delia is accused, by his Nationalist critics, that he will make the PN no different from Labour, Muscat is working on making sure key voter segments do not think of the two parties as interchangeable.
One step is a change of leader before the election. Apart from being able to argue that voters can get change while sticking to Labour, the party will have the luxury of choosing the candidate best able to neutralise Delia’s strengths.
The fundamental step, however, is Labour’s effort to feminise itself. It is actively recruiting women politicians and promising to promote them. If it succeeds, it will have not only a raft of new candidates; it will have changed the party’s complexion.
For a long time, Labour had a discernible advantage over the PN when it came to women voters. Even at the 1987 general election, despite a special targeting campaign (called ‘from women to women’), the PN still lost that demographic to Labour.
In government, under Eddie Fenech Adami, the PN continued to have trouble with women as a group, despite fundamental changes in law and policy that favoured women. My hunch is that, as long as the majority of women did not participate in the labour market, the successive PN governments’ economic policies, which often had inflationary effects, were resented by housewives who had to stretch the family’s household budget.
Under Lawrence Gonzi, things began to change. That was the period when women began to outnumber men as university students, and when the number of women in the workforce grew significantly.
The professionalisation of women saw a partisan shift that favoured the PN. Even though Muscat’s Labour government provided childcare facilities for working women, Simon Busuttil did relatively well with the demographic.
I keep calling it ‘demographic’, in the singular. Of course, there are various categories of women voters, and class solidarity usually outweighs gender solidarity, but all categories have one thing in common: as women become more independent – financially, socially and culturally – the pressure will grow for political representation, for women’s voices to be influential in decision-making.
Labour is gearing itself to be the vehicle for those voices. Women will be a key target in 2022, just as other groups were in 2013 and 2017.
Labour won’t even need to play the abortion card for those women (and men) for whom the issue is political, not moral – and a vote changer. Labour will just stand tall, talking about the need for science-driven policy, while letting Alternattiva Demokratika be its useful idiot (for once) with its insistence on ‘discussion’.
But when the time comes to vote, these women will hear what they’re listening for in Labour’s coded talk. Alternattiva is dominated by the kind of lumpy, clumpy, talkative man they’ve spent their entire lives escaping. Labour, with an array of women candidates, will look like it understands real liberation.
Against this Labour Party, there will be the PN’s Delia, arguing about fundamental values and red lines, while having to tackle questions about his real or imputed links to prostitution rackets and porn-billing sites.
None of this means that the PN must change its policy on abortion. A principled defence of that policy, however, requires a lot more than huffing and puffing.
Whatever else you say about Muscat, he has shown an ability to invite and listen to all the unwelcome news about his outfit, and then ruthlessly take the necessary steps to refurbish it. Unless Delia has the same cold temperament, he’ll soon find he’s a folk hero who belongs to folklore, not contemporary society.
ranierfsadni@europe.com