The wages of spin

At its core, the ongoing debate about minimum wage tells us far less about the respective parties' future plans for the economy, than about the way the two parties themselves are rapidly changing.

The entire controversy began life as a throwaway comment by Labour leader Joseph Muscat during last week's PL congress, when he was asked whether a future Labour government would raise the minimum wage (as separately urged by most trade unions, significantly including the GWU).

Traditionally, this has always been viewed as a political minefield: answer 'yes', and Muscat would only irk employers, while reinforcing the traditional stereotype of Labour as a party somehow inimical to business.

Say 'no', and Muscat would open himself up to a barrage of criticism for abandoning his party's social conscience in order to appease his new 'friends' in the business sector.

The same question also poses problems for the Nationalist government - which has set the minimum wage at its present rate, and instead of periodically revising it, has chosen to offset inflation by means of a 'cost of living adjustment' mechanism, imposed (like the minimum wage itself) on employers.

So in a nutshell, Muscat was merely being asked if he subscribed to the Nationalist method of walking the thin red line between workers and employers. And in a break with tradition, he gave a rather categorical answer: the Labour Party, he said, does not intend to raise the minimum wage.

On the contrary, Muscat's view is that the correct way to address the issue would be to stimulate economic growth, and create the conditions for a wage increase before actually embarking on one - and in this, he is only echoing the arguments aired on countless occasions  by the Malta Employers' Association and Chamber of Commerce, among others.

On paper, this leads us to believe that the two parties are in fact in agreement on this issue. But the Nationalist propaganda machine evidently thought otherwise, and - perhaps unable to resist an easy opportunity to associate Joseph Muscat with the ghosts of Labour's troubled past - immediately tried to link Muscat's statement with the hugely unpopular wage freeze of the 1980s.

Exactly how the Nationalist Party expected to get away with this ruse - when Labour's proposed policies are practically identical to its own on this issue - is anyone's guess. Nor is it clear whether the Nationalist Party paused to consider the potential dangers of its own counter-offensive.

Historically, the PN has always represented the interests of the business classes against a Labour Party which had campaigned aggressively for workers' empowerment at the expense of their employers. So by suddenly appearing to champion the interests of the employees on this occasion, Gonzi  risks provoking the suspicion and mistrust of the very same business class his own party once represented.

Nor can this realistically come at a heavy cost to Labour's own power base. For while the low-earning bracket may well be disappointed at Muscat's failure to guarantee them an imminent windfall, it would be unreasonable to expect them all to suddenly abandon Labour for the PN in droves... especially when the PN is ultimately offering more or less the  exact same deal.

So in a nutshell, Gonzi seems to be alienating the very people whose support he once took for granted... while gaining little or nothing to compensate for this potential loss.

Looking at the same picture from the Opposition's perspective, and the view only compounds what appears to be a completely reversal of roles between the two parties.

Labour now seems willing to confound its own grassroot support base, in a bid to earn the trust of the very sector that has traditionally voted PN... and without whose partial support, neither side can realistically secure the all-important 50% 1 required to form a government.

Politically, therefore, one can see the advantage for Muscat: ultimately he knows that Labour supporters will not be so disgruntled as to abandon their party altogether, ahead of what promises to be a historic win at the polls. And with the PN visibly struggling to keep its own supporters safely within the fold, he has clearly sensed an opportunity to win over a new and politically crucial pillar of the electorate.

To this observation, the cynic might add that Labour is also intent on appeasing a newfound generation of party financiers, as more businesses are understood to be hedging their bets by 'investing' in Labour ahead of a likely change in government.

This would explain much of the increasingly business friendly image Muscat strives so hard to project; and it would also account for a certain note of desperation and hysteria that has meanwhile crept into the PN's tone when talking about this issue.

But while Labour can be credited with scoring points over PN the entire issue remains ultimately a red herring. Both sides remain committed to keeping the status quo for the foreseeable future. So once again we are left only with the uncomfortable notion of a war being fought exclusively on spin, with little or nothing in the way of substance.