Why I think Labour despises those who vote Labour
Labour has long been the wrong choice, and it's no different now
My throwaway remark, in another post today, that the Labour Party had and still has more contempt for those who vote Labour than it does for those who vote PN has attracted a bit of interest.
So let’s have a separate discussion about it.
This has long struck me as being the case, and it’s not some great and remarkable insight.
It works on the Groucho Marx principle of not wanting to become a member of any club that will have you, because by definition, this means that the club has low standards.
Or the Ugly Date principle in which people who think they’re not worth fancying automatically assume that those who defy their expectations and fancy them nonetheless must be themselves not worth fancying.
Labour has long known that it’s the knock-off version. The current attempts to imitate the Nationalist Party by looking, talkng, sounding and dressing like it, painting themselves blue and imitating PN tactics that worked five or 10 years ago is classic knock-off behaviour.
It looks sort of like the real Ermenegildo Zegna coat until you begin looking at the lining and the seams and then it falls apart at the dry-cleaners.
Instead of building a real Labour Party, Joseph is hard at work sewing a knock-off Nationalist Party without the right skills, fabrics or equipment.
But back to the original argument. Labour despises those who vote for it because, at heart, it knows it’s not worth voting for. The people in the party are there because it’s the route to power and influence, and because they’ve been brought up with a mental block against the Nationalist Party and can’t move beyond it.
They’re not there because they think it’s the best party or because they believe it has the most amazing policies.
They look at the people who vote Labour and they think – whether consciously or unconsciously – that those people have really poor judgement and low standards if they are offered a choice between good quality and poor quality and they choose poor quality.
They themselves don’t believe they’re the best and so they look down on the people who choose them.
There’s more than one reason why the Labour Party wants the votes of people like me and others who share my sentiments. It’s not just because they need every vote to win the general election.
It’s also because – I would say MAINLY because – Labour thinks our votes are more valuable and our choices more meaningful.
It’s one of the reasons why Joseph never misses an opportunity to tell us that many Nationalist supporters have moved to Labour. “Now they’ve chosen us! Wow.”
Mintoff was notorious for the contempt in which he held his admirers. He took great pride (privately) in feeding them banal rubbish at his mass meetings for the sheer thrill of hearing them cheer even his greatest stupidities.
He was aware he was talking rot. But he loved the power of making people cheer for rot.
Joseph is different. He is not aware that he talks rot. He does not do it deliberately but because mohhu ma jilhaqx.
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Some of your pieces, like this one, get the Prize for Political Analysis.
I think that analysing the psychology of the Labour Party can be very interesting.
You say: “the people in the party are there because it’s the route to power and influence…”
All parties exist for that purpose among other purposes, but the limitations of those who normally support and lead the Labour Party do not make it fit for anything else.
Hence those in the leading positions within that Party are only able to focus on using the tools available to them to control others and in their interest.
As for your statement: “There’s more than one reason why the Labour Party wants the votes of people like me and others who share my sentiments. It’s not just because they need every vote to win the general election. It’s also because – I would say MAINLY because – Labour thinks our votes are more valuable and our choices more meaningful.”
I would say that a key reason why they would want the vote of people like you is to be able to exert control over you. Again, this is the obsession with power for the sake of power.
I think that Labour appeals a lot to those who have little or no sense of rule of law.
Labour will espcially despise the PN horde that crossed into PL pastures.
These people have a modicum of intelligence (Deborah Schembri or Cyrus are hardly an idiots). What they do not realise is that the PL leadership despises people who have a brain and a mind of their own. In time they will feel lost in poliical wilderness, not quite here or there.
They will be out of favour within months of an elected Labour government.
You are quite right about poor standards in the PL. Whatever they do, they will always go for the cheapest and worst quality because as a people they do not yearn or cannot discern what is refined in life.
Unfortunately, standards have also fallen in the PN recently. Franco’s antics is a case in point. That is why the difference between the two parties is now so blurred that people are crossing the political boundary sometimes unwittingly.
I agree with your reasoning and share the same opinion.
However this only applies to those ‘Labourites’ that have a degree of intelligence, no matter how little.
The Lucianos of this world can’t evaluate a political party and see the LP for what it really is. Politics to them just means talking BS and measuring how well that BS was sold once the votes are in.
Brava
I agree fully with every word written here and have always been of the same opinion myself.
Joseph is symptomatic of Labour. He’s late with policy formulation and definition to set out the values, alien to what we consider normal, accepted policies.
I put it down to the basics not being in place. His Sunday speeches seem more suited for a general conference where the principles upon which to build policies are outlined. Instead, his words betray a personal need to drive home where he stands. If I were a traditional Labour voter, his repeated calls to consider the EU as a reality would mean something. In reality, I’m not and would only be surprised to the opposite.
Either he hasn’t found his footing yet, due the disparate currents, (one has to see how the old terzomondisti, anti-west guard will ever accept those whose idea of Labour is Tony Blair), or he’s utterly incapable of sorting out the helm.
I think it’s a mixture of both, one week he’s overshadowed by Alex Sciberras Trigona, scurrying around with Manuel Mallia the next. .
One thing is sure, he knows he’s an outsider to both camps. Loathed by the reds for being aspirational and lacking in political depth, an object of suspicion by those who want to make of the party their own business. A snob, inverted or not, he isn’t.
The tension caused by Alfred Sant hasn’t been sorted. The latter had been the only one brazen enough to take it upon himself to challenge Mintoff’s ideology. He knew that if there’s one thing they follow, it’s charisma and the aura of superior intellect.
That Muscat isn’t up to it is evident by the void around him, it seems no one wants to be seen too close.
The Labour Party always held its own supporters in contempt in the last fifty or so years since Mintoff wrenched leadership of a legitimate ‘Workers’ Party’ and turned it into ‘his’ party or else.
Following your very argument wouldn’t you and all those voters like yourself, like many others who see the true colours of Labour, become part of the milling crowds that they look down upon.
Because, you see, you would have lowered your standards by voting for them and thus are below contempt.
Just wonderin’.
[Daphne – I’m a bit slow tonight. You’ll have to repeat that, because I don’t understand what you mean.]