Strictly speaking, the future cannot be predicted. How things unfold depends on too many variables, on different choices that can go multiple ways. But forecasting can be based on tracking the most salient features of the present – the seeds of the future that are already with us.
Those two simple ideas – that the future is unpredictable but the present signposts the way – help us look at the likely way ahead on three political fronts.
On the international scene, it’s unlikely that President Donald Trump will be impeached. Even though the Mueller investigation has already seen many former Trump aides charged before the courts, process is everything: there are too many legal and political obstacles to bringing Trump down.
Impeachment might not even be in the interests of a resurgent Democrat Party, with several of its top politicians gearing up to compete for their party’s nomination for the 2020 presidential election. Far better to wound and shackle the devil they know, than have to scramble to figure out a new strategy against a new opponent who replaces a Trump forced to resign.
Nor, unless some significant new evidence of Trump’s misbehaviour emerges, will the Republicans see strong enough reason to abandon Trump. The historically low approval ratings of the President – solid at roughly 43 per cent – are not really comparable to the ratings of past presidents.
That 43 per cent has stuck with Trump through thick and thin. It represents a solid floor beneath which, barring some major political development, Trump’s support will not go. It is clearly also a segment of support that is readily mobilised to vote in a presidential election. It’s 43 per cent of eligible voters but a larger percentage of likely voters.
So Trump’s re-election chances are not to be underestimated, and the Republicans know it.
Right now, therefore, the only kind of event that is likely to derail Trump is if the Special Counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller unearthed new evidence, so far unsuspected, of illegal behaviour by some member of the extended Trump family.
Given that Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are both involved in the kind of real estate business that depends on selling high-end property to oligarchs and kleptocrats, it wouldn’t be surprising if something that could politically be described as money-laundering were discovered.
That is the kind of case, however, that remains a political football – with both sides spinning it the way they want to – rather than one that leads to inexorably to an inevitable legal conclusion.
For the whole of Europe, the year 2019 will of course be shaped by the outcome of the Brexit negotiations. Here it is far less easy to see what the present portends about the future, since the consequences of a no-deal Brexit are, whatever anyone says, unknown. However, they partly depend on business confidence in the UK political system, which is currently very low given the present shambles.
There is one thing that we can be reasonably confident about, though. The optimism of a Brexiter like David Davis, the former cabinet minister in charge of negotiations for leaving the EU, is unjustified. He believes that the EU is likely to come round to a last-minute deal with the UK because that’s how the EU is accustomed to reaching agreements on treaties.
In this case, however, truly last-minute deals that save the day are unlikely. First, the EU treaty negotiations that Davis has in mind are not comparable. This time, if negotiations fail, then the following day an entire raft of major legal consequences automatically follow affecting everyone – from businesses to air travellers to students and pet owners.
A last-minute Brexit deal would not save the EU and UK from chaotic consequences, at least in the short term. For obvious reasons, businesses will have to take decisions some time before the deadline. They cannot gamble their future by closing their eyes and crossing their fingers.
These Brexit negotiations are unlike the usual EU treaty negotiations for another reason. The latter have historically vexed national politicians but not really mobilised entire populations politically. Brexit is different.
The current Brexit package offered by the EU cannot be changed radically. The EU simply cannot afford to offer a deal that offers roughly the same advantages as membership. If it does, the EU would unravel – as more countries would want the advantages with fewer obligations.
In Malta, it seems overwhelmingly likely that Labour will win at least four seats, and the Nationalist Party, probably, two
Moreover, it is not just the EU in general that is at stake. It is also the careers of most of the EU-27 politicians overseeing the Brexit deal. A more generous deal for the UK would render more credible their most dangerous opponents – right-wing nationalists, most in Opposition, and some (as in Italy, Poland and Hungary) in government and eager to redefine the very character of the EU.
This much, then, one can actually forecast: if the UK sees politicians like Davis ascendant over Theresa May, then their misjudged bluffing will likely lead to a no-deal Brexit. After that, the consequences of an unprecedented situation will be difficult to predict.
They might, in the most optimistic scenario, affect only cross-border transportation for the UK in the short term; but the consequences could also lead to a Europe-wide economic hit that includes property prices, if credit tightening follows as part of a chain reaction.
All this means that any last-minute Brexit negotiations will be shaped by, and in turn influence, the European Parliament elections due in late May. Until a year ago, the question was whether the newly-elected President of France Emmanuel Macron would manage to put together a Europe-wide coalition to sweep up MEP seats in the same way that he put together a national coalition in a short time.
That, now, seems as quaint a notion as the idea of Macron being full of promise. The real issue is the extent to which economic and cultural nationalists will do well electorally.
In Malta, it seems overwhelmingly likely that Labour will win at least four seats, and the Nationalist Party, probably, two.
Therefore it is likely that June will see the PN once more sinking further into mutual recrimination, while Labour discusses its own self-renewal through new candidates and, possibly, through preparations to elect a new leader.
Whatever happens on the leadership front, the rest of the year will see Labour preside over the celebrations of several national anniversaries – the 100th of the Sette Giugno, the 55th of Independence, the 45th of the Republic – as though it’s the natural party of government.
Given the nationalist rhetoric, it will be tempting for Labour’s critics to draw parallels with fascism, since such parallels will continue to be fashionable with liberal opposition forces in 2019. My own hunch is that that would be a double mistake.
First, it would be an analytical error. Labour is politically right-wing because it is authoritarian; but it is not fascist. Economically, it is right-wing because it practises crony capitalism not because it’s economically nationalist.
Second, it would therefore lead to a failure of persuasion. To criticise power for being what it is manifestly not will make the critics sound as hollow as the politicians preaching solidarity while they disrupt entire communities to pay their dues to a few fat cats.
This year will be one in which the sense of the hollowness of politicians, in Europe and in Malta, will grow. We might not be able to do much about that. But let’s do what we can to make criticism as vibrant as the new generations it seeks to serve.
ranierfsadni@europe.com
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece