There are four basic questions facing the Nationalist Party, in this hour of agony. They need to be kept separate to enable the discussion not to get all dizzy spinning round in circles.
First, given what the trolls will say about my hidden agenda, here are some facts, easily checked. I have never been a member of the PN (or any other party). I’ve never had a vote or role in any leadership election.
To those who say I am one of those who never accepted Delia as PN leader: my column declared he was the next leader before he even won. I outlined, with sympathy, why Delia’s campaign message resonated among so many party members. I did say his account of his business affairs was unconvincing but I also wrote things that made his main rival’s team furious.
I call it the way I see it. I’ve defended Delia against the charges of racism, when everyone else said he was guilty. I criticised the inept European Parliament campaign but have also credited some of Delia’s close aides with insight, when the easy applause is to be found in bashing them.
The only agenda here is to explain how the world works. Which brings us straight to Malta today, where the PN is in the throes of a full leadership crisis. We need to separate two questions which are about the real issues, and two others which are about distractions.
First, what is the basic issue? It’s not that Delia cannot win the next general election. That would be understandable. It’s that he can’t even stabilise the current crisis. Under him, the PN is bleeding votes.
The gap between Labour and the PN has grown since the EP election. Partly, it’s because the result disguised the real gap, since some voters turned out to vote PN despite Delia. Partly, it’s because Delia managed to make things worse with his gross misjudgement over who should fill David Stellini’s Gozo seat.
That misjudgement was an unforced error. It can’t be blamed on factions or traitors. It should have been a no-brainer – a way to engineer a unanimous vote from the party’s executive committee. Instead it created another crisis.
A political party’s function is to win general elections. If a leader can’t win power, he’s part of the problem
When that kind of mistake happens, it’s the surest indication that the leadership team is no longer capable of thinking lucidly. It’s thinking like a sect instead of like a broad church. Irrespective of who’s to blame (we’ll get to that in a moment), if the leader is sectarian, he can’t win. Ever.
So the basic issue the PN needs to decide is whether the party, under Delia, will continue to bleed votes – no matter whose fault it is.
Second, is the issue of replacing Delia primarily a statutory one? No. It’s a matter of whether he can retain a shred of authority.
A petition has circulated among PN councillors asking the General Council to decide whether it believes Delia should take ‘political responsibility’ for the dismal results. It’s really beside the point whether this petition is in conformity with the PN’s statute (although it appears to be, since it’s not technically a vote for or against the leader but rather an invitation for him to consider his position).
Up till this point, Delia’s argument has always been that his leadership enjoyed the authority that comes from the backing of the party’s members. For various reasons, he may have lacked the organisational power enjoyed by previous leaders but he had the legitimacy.
That position is completely reversed if, now, he evades the General Council vote by legalistic hair-splitting. He would lose all authority. He’d hang on by dint of sheer control of the party machine. He’d be another (post-1998) Alfred Sant.
He will lose any credibility as a prime minister-in-waiting. In a contest of sheer power, with authority and legitimacy reduced to the sidelines, Labour will sweep to victory again.
Those are the two basic issues. What keeps them from being clear to some are two distracting questions.
One asks about double standards. Why should Delia resign because of a bad EP result, when Lawrence Gonzi and Simon Busuttil, also with bad EP results, did not?
First, if a mistake was made then, there is no reason to repeat it. However, the cases are different.
Gonzi lost the EP elections just over a year after winning a general election in which he was personally the PN’s winning card. There was every reason to think asking for his resignation was premature.
Busuttil lost the EP elections just over a year after a devastating general election defeat for which he was one of the few to escape personal blame. Besides, he won the elusive third seat for the PN (even if it was down to luck). Once more, there was every reason to think asking for his resignation was premature.
Such distinctions between cases can be found elsewhere. In 1997, Britain’s Conservatives elected William Hague as leader. It was clear he was not going to win the 2001 election but was kept on. When he lost, Iain Duncan Smith was elected leader. He was got rid of within a couple of years, and replaced with a caretaker.
Why the different standard? Because Duncan Smith was repelling voters, while Hague was simply not making inroads. The PN needs to decide if Delia is a Hague or a Duncan Smith.
The second distracting question is about pinning blame. If Delia isn’t entirely to blame for the fracas, why should he resign?
It’s a distraction because a political party’s function is to win general elections. If a leader can’t win power, he’s part of the problem – even if he didn’t create the problem all by himself.
No doubt, some MPs have sometimes behaved irresponsibly on social media. But some of Delia’s harshest party critics have reserved their fire within internal meetings – holding their tongue publicly even when some disaffected PN voters have repeatedly called them spineless.
A look at the parliamentary votes of PN MPs shows that there are no real ideological factions. The absence of an obvious leader-in-waiting shows that there is no faction gathered behind an alternative leader. There are ‘factions’ only in the sense that there are pro and anti-Delia groupings; and the fact that Delia’s support is shrinking indicates that the only issue is how the party is being led.
To blame others for being unable to lead is only an indirect way of blaming yourself. Uniting different points of view is a crucial quality of leadership. To blame your failures on a dead journalist, or a minor pressure group, or a handful of MPs, is to admit to your own severe limitations. If you can be defeated by them, who can you win against?
These and only these, are the issues. The rest is mere sound and fury, threatening to bring the PN to signify nothing.