Nag, whine, bitch and grumble – no wonder Muscat appeals mainly to disillusioned, disgruntled, disaffected middle-aged people

“Labour’s “progressive movement” will be taking to the streets at the end of the month to protest against the way the country is being run and show the people’s disapproval of the government.

After harshly criticising the government for an hour, Labour leader Joseph Muscat lived up to a promise he made in previous weeks and called “the people” to attend a mass demonstration on October 25 in Żabbar.

“The country immediately needs a Prime Minister who is interested in the concerns of the people rather than internal fights within his own party,” Dr Muscat said, referring to ongoing disputes within the Nationalist Party’s parliamentary group.

Addressing supporters in Fgura, Dr Muscat complained about practically everything, from the mismanagement of Enemalta and the shipyards to the shortcomings in the health and education sectors.”

– from The Times, today

He thought he would be pulling young people to him in droves because he’s ‘young’. But in reality, young people think he’s old and those he’s pulling are middle-aged people who are fed-up of everything, but mainly of themselves.

I suppose this is what Muscat meant when he said that Marisa Micallef is the standard-bearer (he didn’t use the word, but it’s what he meant) for the sort of people who are flocking to Labour. He’s right. She is.

And when you hear the man bitch, bicker and paint the town grey, you know exactly why. The above report from The Times was written by somebody who is 22 years old. Somehow, you can tell he wasn’t exactly inspired by Muscat’s speech, which read like something that should have been written in seven words on a sandwich-board and paraded around town by an obsessive: THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH.

Nobody needs this kind of a downer. The 40 – 60 bunch who have such dampened spirits at the thought of life passing them by, of mortality creasing their bodies and dispersing their hair from their heads to places where it should never grow, need a pep talk to cheer them up, and not another four years of suicide-inducing rants.

And to young people, it’s just so, so unappealing. When you’ve got your whole adult life ahead of you, the last thing you want is somebody preaching gloom and doom and hopelessness. Dom Mintoff, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and Alfred Sant all practised what Lawrence Gonzi called ‘il-politika tal-qtigh il-qalb’. Now here’s Muscat, picking up where they left off.

One of my sons (in his 20s, and not remotely interested in the negative politics of Labour, except as a ringside observer to a circus act) made a point that had slipped past me.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the so-called rebel backbenchers are all in your age group,” he said (I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way), “and the same age as all those people you know who are now running after Labour. It’s not a political crisis they’re going through, or a crisis of principles. It’s a midlife crisis. They’re in crisis and they think the country is.”

Dammit. You know, I think he’s right.