Where are the socialist extremists?

The Prime Minister made a list of the "dangerous socialists" lurking in the shadows of Joseph Muscat's party.

All he could produce was a list of people who neither look 'extremely' socialist nor particularly dangerous.

Leo Brincat was part of the post-1981 cabinet but today he personifies moderation and has a more continental image than newer politicians on both sides.

What about Karmenu Vella? Probably something reminiscent of the 1980s still runs in him, but it is more the business-friendly Craxism of the 1980s than full-bodied socialism.

Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca may have been general secretary of the PL in those turbulent times. But during the divorce referendum campaign she stood out as more Christian-democratic than many Nationalists.

That leaves us with former foreign minister Alex Sceberras Trigona, who may fit the Prime Minister's definition, mainly because of his silly antics with the media and his impregnable silence during the Arab Spring. But he is not even a potential Cabinet member. He is just an international secretary for the party.

But how could the PM call 'socialist' a party that was scared to take a stance on divorce and is unable to commit itself on such basic issues like raising the minimum wage?

Perhaps what the PM had in mind was the caricature of Maltese socialism represented by the authoritarian cronyism of the 1980s.

Surely by resurrecting the past Gonzi is doing his best to counteract Muscat's attempt to clone the PN and transplant its organs to the Mile End. This strategy may contain the haemorrhage of at least the elderly Nationalists, but will fail as long as it does not break the spell of Muscat's political seduction.

Muscat's Achilles' heel is not represented by "extreme socialism" but the lingering suspicion among many that Joseph Muscat's project lacks authenticity: that his new party is simply a fake.

Even Tony Blair, who sought to emulate some aspects of Tory policies, had to face his Clause 4 moment - when he ditched the party's symbolically ideological commitment to nationalisation. Muscat has never faced any real debate in his party.

Still, Muscat still describes his movement as a "coalition". But this could not be further from the truth. What we have is not a coalition, but a sum of disparate parts as we had when Labour won in 1996. Muscat has gone a step forward than Sant, by welcoming in his party personalities - many of which lack any previous political experience and who sympathised with the other side.

Yet one cannot describe this assortment of different people as a coalition. Coalitions entail a joint programme uniting different political identities and organised groups.  Coalitions are synonymous with strong parties, not individuals congregating around leaders with presidential aspirations.

In the PL's case the only uniting factor of this assortment is winning the next election.  In this way the PL has let itself to be transformed in to an anti-GonziPN front, only to become itself a mirror image of its adversary. The only difference now lies in the personalities and the networks and that a Labour victory is a safer bet to make.

The Labour Party (like the Nationalist Party under GonziPN) has been absent from the scene. It is now 'all about Muscat', who has managed to construct a movement stretching from former Nationalist sympathiser and top criminal lawyer Emmanuel Mallia to Yana Mintoff-Bland, offspring of the father of the Labour party.

When one hears Muscat rewriting his party's history in a way which suits both Mintoffians and Nationalist converts, one gets the impression that the Labour leader has been given a carte blanche by his party to win the next election. Could it be that some Labourites are simply tolerating all this until they get back to power?

Muscat's best hope is that victory in the next election will elevate him to the PL's pantheon of heroes in a way that his leadership will remain unchallenged even as he embarks on the difficult task of disappointing many of the expectations he is raising now.