Mass meeting placards: the difference between the parties

When you look at a Labour mass meeting, like this afternoon’s, there’s a sea of whatever it is that they’ve been told to bring along, or have had handed out to them from lorries on location. So you look at your television screen, and it’s a sea of uniformity, all regimented.

You look at a Nationalist mass meeting and it’s as though everybody wants to be different and individual, and have some stand-out flag or placard for the cameras. Uniformity and regimentation? No, thank you – leave that for Labour, which despite its name is the closest thing Malta has to Marine Le Pen’s outfit and other Far Right parties.

The demographic make-up of Labour and Nationalist mass meetings is very, very different – it’s actually visible on television – and it’s probably this, rather than anything else, which accounts for the fact that people at Nationalist meetings get creative and make their own placards, while people at Labour meetings take those handed to them out of a van.

The long-ago anthropologist in me is always going to find these things more interesting than what the speakers at the meetings actually said.