[ANALYSIS] Labour’s migration tirade: Inelegant and toxic

There is logic in Labour’s direct appeal to the Delia faction on the aftermath of the resounding victory of Bernard Grech: Labour is wary of a poll rebound that could be inevitable if he manages to reunite the PN around him, a precondition for any future gains among M.O.R. voters.

A trust boost for Grech in the unified PN cohort could give him traction in his long-term goal of narrowing the gap with Labour and dismiss the perception that the PN is a dead weight.

So playing the migration card to exacerbate the splits in the PN (and not only because Delia has legitimised such sentiments in his party) can make it tricky to rebut Robert Abela’s simplistic “full up” argument when a PN leader needs a poll boost. This explains Grech’s unwillingness to engage on this issue by passing the buck on a ‘national conference’ to be organised by the party to discuss this issue.

But by issuing official statements decrying the election of Grech for being a part of the “pro-migrant” faction aligned to Busuttil, Labour may have gone overboard for a number of reasons.

1. Attacking a new leader immediately through an aggressive, official statement instead of congratulating him is inelegant and comes across as petty and tribal

Instead of elegantly congratulating Bernard Grech upon his election as PN leader and auguring a healthy confrontation, Labour went overboard in attacking the new leader. While it is not surprising that political parties exploit divisions in the other party to their advantage, they normally rely on spin doctors and the party media to stir trouble on the other side. Even under Muscat the PL played the game more elegantly, by officially keeping a distance from PN’s internal troubles while stoking the fires through party media and social media networks. In fact, Muscat had invited and met Adrian Delia at the PL headquarters upon his election as PN leader in 2017. Abela has also now invited Grech for a meeting… but only after his party issued a bellicose statement immediately after his election.

2. Support for Grech among party members was overwhelming. The argument that the elite has overturned rank and file party members is now bankrupt

By appealing directly to the Delia faction, Labour is disrespecting the will of the vast majority of Nationalist members who support Grech. Instead of recognising the democratic choice of PN members, Labaour derided Grech’s triumph as a victory of the party establishment: “The PN’s establishment has won, the same one that was discarded by the people in one election after the other… this election has confirmed the division that exists between the factions.” But Labour ignores the fact that Grech won over two votes for each one Delia obtained, in a resounding reunification of those warring factions, and not just restricted to the so-called Busuttil faction.

Even from a strategic angle the scale of Grech’s victory makes any major gains for Labour among the cohort of Delia supporters unlikely. Openly attacking the new PN leader could have the intended effect of reinforcing unity in the PN in the face of Labour’s interference and encourage Grech to offer Delia an olive branch to cement this new-found party unity.

3. Labour needs an interlocutor in difficult COVID-19 times

While passionate debate and confrontation are an essential part of democratic politics, the leader of the Opposition also occupies a constitutional role with which the Prime Minister is expected to engage and consult. Offering an olive branch could be Abela’s silent revolution if he had to ditch practically all figures associated with Panamagate and other ongoing scandals, thereby removing the obstacles to cross-party cooperation in addressing the challenges faced by the country during a time of economic difficulties. Strategically it could make more sense for Labour to offer an olive branch to Grech, as this would put him in a position of difficulty in reconciling the more intransigent factions in his party with more moderate elements.

4. By playing the migration card to attract Delia loyalists, Labour may end up attracting to it ideologically incompatible elements

Before 2013 Labour did contribute to the PN’s internal haemorrhage by appealing to social liberals whose views were often compatible with Muscat’s version of market friendly social liberalism.But the attempt to play up the migration card by deceptively identifying Grech with “the faction of Busuttil, who agrees that immigrants are brought to Malta” risks giving the impression that Labour is becoming a dump where any rejected Nationalist can feel comfortable, irrespective of any ideological considerations. This strategy is questionable as it may attract voters who are ideologically on the opposite side of the political spectrum.

Labour has already attracted the support of former Nationalists with a questionable track record. Sending the message that Labour is more hawkish on migration than Grech’s PN risks sounding like an invitation to the PN’s hard-right to join Labour. It also exposes contradictions in Labour with Abela’s own chief of staff Clyde Caruana having been a strong advocate of importing foreign labour to prop up the Muscat economic model. Labour not only opened the country to 65,000 legal foreign workers but also includes left-wing elements who shun Abela’s divisive language on the issue.

By lashing out at Grech because of his presumed views on immigration rather than on his conservatism and vague social and economic policies, Labour comes across as crass and all too willing to appeal to prejudice.

5. Labour’s antipathy towards the so-called Busuttil faction is less effective now that the former opposition leader has been partly vindicated

Labour has over the past years banked on the antipathy generated by the PN’s more intransigent elements, whose anti-corruption drive masked a sense of entitlement deployed in equal doses against anyone remotely associated with Labour and against Delia, who was unfairly portrayed as Labour’s useful idiot. Labour may well be more effective by lashing at Grech’s tax debacle, which exposed the double standards of those who were unforgiving with Labour and Delia, but were all too willing to whitewash Grech’s sins.

But with judicial probes beefing a number of allegations made by Simon Busuttil before the 2017 electoral campaign, Labour’s demonization of the former PN leader is losing its potency. M.O.R. voters may be more inclined now to give Busuttil credit for exposing Mizzi and Schembri before the election, especially in a situation where Abela himself is distancing himself from his predecessor’s legacy.

6. By going overboard against Grech, the PL risks confirming that he represents a threat to its hold on power

Labour warned that “with Bernard Grech, the PN goes back to the policies of yesterday of higher utility bills, a migration policy where everyone is let in, and an inferiority complex before foreign countries where Malta bows down to all others say”. This sounds like a caricature of a rival who is perceived as a more effective threat to Labour’s hegemony than Delia ever was. Such a strong premature reaction fuels rumours of an imminent general election, something that may sound off-putting to voters preoccupied by COVID-19.

Labour may be trying to nip Grech in the bud before he gains traction in the polls and be in a position to start the long march to recovery.

But in doing so Labour may end up strengthening Grech as a unifying force in his party.

Ultimately this depends on Grech’s actions in the next few days where he is expected to articulate a vision which appeals beyond the restricted constituency of older PN members, mostly hailing from PN leaning localities.