According to Labour’s post-election analysis of the vote between 7,000 and 10,000 supporters abstained because of Labour’s complete U-turn with regards to the EU. These are not all hard-core anti-EU diehards. While some admittedly expected Labour to fight for withdrawal from the EU, the vast majority respect the referendum result but were highly annoyed by the party’s sudden change of attitude. They expected the critical language to survive, especially since there is much to be critical about in such a supranational political project. Many others, though equally repelled by the Joe Mifsud type of Europhiles, voted Labour anyway.

It goes without saying that Sant’s extreme post-referendum stance and his complete U-turn after the 2003 election defeat did not lend much to his credibility: – Referendum fazull! – Vote No, abstain or invalidate your vote! – Il-Partnership rebah! – Fil-Kostituzzjoni Ewropea m’hemm xejn li jwegga! – Mas-Socjalisti Ewropej nahdmu id f’id ghax l-Unjoni tista’ ssolvielna l-problemi kollha! – Min jikkritika jitkecca!

That type of opportunism does not work any longer.

The truth is, it is not all balck or white, and there is nothing wrong with critical-mindedness. Indeed, the critical analytical approach is traditionally favoured in academia, especially in the sociological and political fields.

[Daphne – David and I are not debating whether he let the side down. That is a given. We are debating whether he caused the loss of votes. David thinks so. I don’t. I actually think he galvanised the vote, and the evidence is in the way he brought out the vote in his constituencies. If people felt that way in his constituencies, they will have felt exactly the same in other constituencies, but without the ability to vote for him. He has no track record of such strong support. The support was directly linked to his perceived persecution. A lot of people would have ticked his box as one in the eye for Sant.]

[Daphne – I really don’t think so. I know what the polls said, I know the numbers, but unlike some, I don’t hypothesise. It could have been any number of things, and perhaps even no particular thing at all. Labour lost thousands of votes in the last few weeks of the campaign. It lost them on a daily basis. Was there a single reason? No. You can only suppose that it was this or that, and take an educated guess. Unfortunately, the analysis that linked the slight fall-off of support for the PN in the last few days to the Pullicino Orlando case was made on the back of huge (and justified) anger at his failure to disclose all information immediately to those who mattered, and I don’t just mean his electors. When you’re that enraged, you need to whack the person. And that’s why all analysis should be carried out with a cool, clear and dispassionate head, rather than an angry one. I wasn’t angry at the situation, but totally detached: I actually believe he pulled in the votes of people who wouldn’t have voted otherwise. I was equally dispassionate in the aftermath, which is why, when those who mattered, and Joe and Mary Average, were screaming for his resignation and putting pressure on him to go, I argued that it made more sense in the long run not to upset the apple-cart.After all, the seat is his and not the party’s; his constituents voted him in to represent them, and if he was going to be made to resign from anything at all, it could only be from the party, by having the whip withdrawn, leading to the collapse of the government which would then be deprived of its one-seat majority. Also, when you exclude and publicly humiliate somebody by pushing them outside the group, you turn them into the equivalent of a rogue elephant (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rogue+elephant), which is never a good idea. My stance was that things would calm down and blow over if he stayed where he was, but forcing him out would create problems, and those problems wouldn’t necessarily be created by Pullicino Orlando. The next in line to fill his seat, had he resigned, was probably Toni Abela, who drives a large cream Mercedes with a number-plate IN-NUTAR. How would that have been better? And make no mistake, much of the agitation for Pullicino Orlando’s resignation may have come from those with an agenda for their own furtherance.]

[Daphne – I have had a zillion arguments about this one, David. It’s not possible. People who live in Pullicino Orlando’s constituencies are not a different species which thinks differently. They are a representative sample of the population, and those who vote Nationalist in those constituencies are a representative sample of people who vote Nationalist anywhere else on the island. Hence, the rationale behind their support for Pullicino Orlando should be taken as representative of the general thinking among those who favoured the Nationalist Party in other constituencies. It clearly makes no sense to say that everyone who was a ‘hard-core PN supporter’ happened to be living in those two constituencies, while everyone who disapproved of Pullicino Orlando lived in other constituencies and didn’t vote, or switched capriciously from PN to Labour just because of that, at the 11th hour. If electors in Pullicino Orlando’s constituencies reacted to Sant’s bullying behaviour by backing him with their vote, then you can rest assured that tens of thousands of people in other constituencies would have done the same if they could. People who live in Mosta and wherever are not a race apart. They think the way everyone else does.]

[Daphne – Nor is it entirely a coincidence that, like his successor, his mother raised him to think the sun shines out of the seat of his pants. Mothers of sons….boy, can they screw up. I’ve just read that Charles Ponzi, the Italian (Sicilian?) who operated the first-ever pyramid scheme scam in the 1920s, as an immigrant to North America, did it all to impress his mama back home.]

[Daphne – I disagree completely with the interpretation of the effect Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando had on people’s voting intentions in the last few days of the election. Commonsense should tell those who interpreted the result this way that, if people didn’t vote PN because of him, then he wouldn’t have been elected on the first count in two districts, and with votes to spare.]

So, applying Nixon’s quote to the present Labour leader, do you think Joseph Muscat is good for politics?

Regarding Alfred Sant, it’s true that his ill-health unfortunately probably played a part in the errors of the last electoral campaign but 2008 was not the only election he lost. What about 1998, 2003 and the referendum? If the Labour organisation was hopeless, that’s also largely his responsability too. As a political figure Alfred Sant should be judged on his entire career not just his last few months as Labour leader.