Secrets and lies

This was my column in The Malta Independent on Sunday, last Sunday.

Malta Today has run an internet poll in which readers volunteered to say whether Labour is right to keep its policies secret.

More than half of those who came forward with their answer said yes, keeping its policies secret is a reasonable electoral strategy for the Labour Party, and that it is “only a matter of time” before the party reveals them.

The newspaper is now running a story trumpeting this fact, but omitting to mention that the majority of its readers are Labour Party supporters, so in the notorious words of a 1960s call-girl, they would say that, wouldn’t they.

If they were Nationalist Party supporters asked the same question about the Nationalist Party (should that party lose a few screws and wake up with the notion that facing the electorate without proposals for government is a great idea), then the answer would be very different.

Those who vote for the Nationalist Party are by definition more critical and discriminating than those who vote Labour. They would be wildly, madly antagonistic to any attempt by the Nationalist Party to face the electorate without a proper plan and specific objectives, and would say so, loudly and constantly.

Those who vote Labour, however, are the sort who make poor choices and who accept anything their party tells them. One minute they’re told to hate the European Union; the next minute they’re told to wave EU flags at meetings, and they obey.

They’re banned from waving their favourite party flags, and they obey.

They’re told not to wear red, and they obey.

They’d make great candidates for the Black Shirts or Brown Shirts, but then I’ve always said that Labour is far to the right. If it were liberal, it would allow its people to wear and wave what they please. And if its supporters were liberal, they wouldn’t be voting for it.

Now they’re being told that it’s Labour’s actual strategy to keep those policies secret, but instead of putting a rocket under the party, and saying, look here, how do you expect us to vote for something when you don’t tell us what it is, they back this so-called strategy and allow themselves to be treated like chumps.

They do this, and Labour knows it can get away with it, because Labour supporters don’t vote for policies. They think of politics in terms of football and vote for the party, come what may and whatever it does or doesn’t do.

The minute they become critical and rational, they migrate to the Nationalist Party. Conversely, when former Nationalist Party supporters cease to be rational, generally because they are blinded by bitterness or boredom, they migrate to Labour.

It would be fascinating, if the consequences were not so serious for the country.

Malta Today’s question is absurd and inaccurate, anyway. It is based on the assumption that, because Labour has not put forward any policies for debate, then this is because it is keeping them secret.

It assumes that Labour has policies in the first place.

Of this, there is absolutely no evidence. Quite to the contrary, the indications are that Labour has no policies to speak of, and that is exactly why it is not speaking of them. They are not secret; they just don’t exist.

Labour no longer replies, when asked about its policies, with the mysterious “we will reveal them when the time is appropriate”. Ever since it launched its much-derided “51-point plan” (“we aim to make Malta a better place”; “everyone will have access to free gel nails”), it has countered accusations of having no policies with the response that it put 51 of them up for consideration and that instead of being impressed, we mocked them publicly.

If I were a Labour boss, right now I’d be worried. An on-line poll is completely different to a proper survey, because a survey selects and profiles people and an on-line poll waits for them to come forward and has no idea who they are.

But still, we do know what Malta Today’s readership predominantly is, because of its editorial slant. So that poll result concerns Labour far more than it does the Nationalist Party.

It means, in effect, that Labour’s supporters haven’t noticed that the party put a “51-point plan” into the ring, and if they did notice, they laughed it off like the rest of us as a bit of vague and amateur hogwash (“we aim to make Malta the best in Europe”).

Labour would be wrong to argue back that it doesn’t care because those people are going to vote for them anyway. What it should think about now is that if even its own people have disregarded its “51-point plan” as meaningless, if they even noticed it at all, what about the people whose votes Labour hopes to grasp?

The rest of us have something far more pressing to fret about: that every five years, we are put to risk by the choices of people who are prepared to vote for a party without knowing what it plans to do, and who believe that this party has policies even when they are not told what they are, and who do not become extremely indignant when the party asking for their vote tells them that they do not need to know what its policies are but should take them on trust.

The Labour Party moves further to the right with every passing month. Refusing to divulge its policies to its supporters (and everyone else) while expecting blind obedience and loyalty just the same is yet another shift in that direction. With every such decision, it becomes ever more repulsive and disturbing to true liberals.

If the Labour Party does not have any policies to reveal, because Karmenu Vella was not up to the task, as expected, then it should just be honest and say so, instead of performing these ridiculous dances with its seven veils.