How to win an election, without even bothering to campaign

Almost exactly 15 years ago – immediately after Malta’s second-ever European Parliamentary elections – I wrote an article in this newspaper which began: “Never mind the Labour Party’s four seats and the PN’s 35,000 vote drubbing. Once the dust settles from this election, Malta will slowly have to take stock of the fact that the real winner was none other than the radical, racist right.”

It was a reference to the extraordinary achievement of only one candidate: Norman Lowell, who somehow managed to garner 3,600 first-count votes – easily surpassing all other independent contestants in the same election – despite all the obstacles that had earlier been stacked against him.

These included the fact that Lowell had contested while still serving a suspended sentence for ‘incitement to racial hatred’; he had been denied space on both PBS, and also (by order of the Broadcasting Authority) on private stations such as Smash TV; not to mention that Lowell himself hardly even bothered campaigning at all, in the weeks and months preceding the vote.

As I put it in that article, 15 years ago: “apart from the occasional YouTube video clip, his entire campaign expenditure appears to have been limited to a single packet of balloons.”

And yet, Lowell went on to pip the likes of Azzjoni Nazzjonali’s Josie Muscat, the Alpha Liberal Democratic Party, Cecil Herbert Jone’s ‘KUL Europa’, and (perhaps unsurprisingly) Nazzarenu Bonnici’s Tal-Ajkla party, to place fourth overall after PL, PN and Alternattiva Demokratika.

It was a record he would substantially improve upon in 2014 – when he doubled his tally to 6,761 – and then again in 2019, with 8,238 votes (and on both occasions, without even trying too hard).

This brings us to the ongoing 2024 campaign, and… what do you know? Norman Lowell appears well on course to repeat the same achievement, for the third consecutive time. On March 17, The Times published a survey suggesting that Lowell would attract 2.5% of the national vote – i.e., around 9,000 – which works out as more than double the tally of his closest rival in the ‘independent/third party’ category (Arnold Cassola, who only registered 1.2%).

More recently, a 28 April survey by IDEA Group predicted that Lowell would garner a staggering 4.3% of FIRST-COUNT votes (and if I emphasise ‘first-count’ so much, it’s because there are 39 counts in this election; and with around 16,000 already in the bag, Lowell would stand a very real chance of winning a seat in the European Parliament, through ‘vote-inheritance’).

Oh, and it’s worth pointing out that in all three prior EP elections, surveys had failed to pick up on the full extent of his popularity. So if this trend persists today: IDEA’s prediction of ‘4.3%’ might fall far short of Lowell’s actual performance, on June 8…

Naturally, it remains to be seen whether any of these predictions will materialise; but one thing is already painstakingly clear. Love him or hate him, Lowell has proven to be by far the most successful ‘non-mainstream’ politician Malta has ever seen… and all indications, at present, are that his popularity will only keep growing for the foreseeable future.

This raises a small question that I think we ought to start seriously asking ourselves, for a change.  Why is this even happening? And please note: I don’t mean, ‘why are so many voters attracted to a man whose politics make even Adolf Hitler look like a ‘liberal leftie’?’ (Let’s face it: we all know that a sizeable chunk of Malta’s electorate would be just as willing to vote for Hitler himself, given half a chance…)

No, I mean: ‘why is Norman Lowell still so consistently popular, among Maltese voters… when the man himself hasn’t actually been seen at all - or even heard of, quite frankly – for almost all of the past five years?’

Think about it for a sec: when’s the last time any of you heard anything that Norman Lowell said, which wasn’t lifted from one of the YouTube videos that originally made him famous, more than 20 years ago? When’s the last time he addressed a meeting in public? Or appeared on TV, for that matter?

Reason I ask is that – after a quick online search this morning – I was only capable of finding one, single solitary instance where Norman Lowell actually made an appearance in public, since 2019. It was in November 2023, when he was filmed (by an audience member) delivering an impromptu speech ‘from behind a bar’.

And that doesn’t even count as a campaign effort, because: a) it was almost two years before the campaign started, and; b) it wasn’t even intended to be made public, in the first place.

In terms of actual campaigning, however – and everything we take that word to mean: leaflets, flyers, corner-meetings, YouTube clips; even buying the occasional packet of balloons, if it comes it – there has, so far, been… nothing whatsoever.

Or to be more precise: nothing that has gravitated into my field of vision. To be fair, Lowell might be extremely active on social-media platforms I know nothing about. But then again: what use is any of that, if those platforms are just as invisible to anybody who’s not already a committed Norman Lowell voter? (To put that another way: how can he ‘reach out’ to the wider community – including a whole new generation of voters – if his message is only accessible on ‘underground’ media?)

Yet somehow, he is managing to do precisely that. He has consistently improved upon his past electoral performances… which in turn suggests that his message is indeed getting across.

Or does it? OK, let’s a rewind a little to that 2009 election I alluded to earlier. As I wrote at the time: “Upon his elimination on the 17th count, Lowell’s surplus votes were redistributed among a number of candidates, including both Labour and PN candidates... and also AD’s Arnold Cassola, as diametrically opposed to Lowell’s own radical right-wing politics as it is conceivable to be.”

This led me to conclude (and I stand by that conclusion, today) that: “The Lowell vote […] also camouflages a sizeable portion of disgruntled, disaffected, cynical and jaded voters, united only by a vague sense of nationalism, and a genuine concern with the country’s changing demographics. […] This in turn can be taken as a vote of no confidence, not necessarily in the present government, but rather in Malta’s entire political class.”

Simply put: Lowell’s popularity cannot be attributed solely to his far-right political views. On one level, you could argue that he has become something of a poster-boy for Malta’s growing ‘anti-establishment’ feeling, across a whole range of issues (including quite a few that have nothing whatsoever to do with his political agenda).

He is, in a word, the ‘go-to candidate’ you vote for, when (for whatever reason) you want to ‘piss off’ the mainstream parties of the day…

Even if we stick only to his far-right agenda, however: the simple truth is that Norman Lowell doesn’t need to do any campaigning, to succeed in this particular regard. He knows, as well as I do, that all that is already being taken care of by others: in ways that became particularly apparent, in the course of this very campaign.

Recently, for instance, Nationalist Party’s education (!) spokesman Justin Schembri got himself reported in the news, for commenting on Facebook that (his exact words, folks): “Malta is full of filth, shabbiness, and Indians”.

Now: under normal circumstances, political opponents would be quick as lightning, to capitalise on a political faux-pas of such whopping proportions. (It reminded me of the time when Labour minister Charles Mangion commented that ‘there is something wrong with the Nationalist Party’s DNA’. The resulting earthquake was so overwhelming, that Mangion was eventually forced to apologise…)

On this occasion, however: there was hardly any reaction at all. One News only briefly alluded to Schembri’s remark (and tellingly, the report claimed that it had ‘angered NGOs and activists’: with no mention of any criticism from the Labour Party itself); and as things stand today, the only calls for an apology/retraction came from Equality junior minister Rebecca Buttigieg (to her credit, the only Labour Party exponent to even mention the incident at all); the aforementioned ‘NGOs and activists’; sections of the media (including this newspaper), and…

… who else? Oh yes: Malta’s entre Indian community, which – with characteristic humility – only expressed ‘sadness’ at the egregious insult.

As for everyone else (including PN leader Bernard Grech, who still refuses to censure Schembri), it was a classic case of: ‘DON’T MENTION THE [IMMIGRATION ISSUE]!’

And if all Malta’s mainstream parties continue to insist, so doggedly, on ignoring an issue which – again, whether or not any of you ‘agrees’ or ‘disagrees’ – still evidently strikes such a resounding chord, among the Maltese electorate…

… who else is there even left to vote for, other than the most radically racist, anti-immigration politician on the ballot sheet? And why would that one politician even bother campaigning, at all… when he already knows he can win anywhere up to 16,000 first-count votes, merely on the strength of the mainstream parties’ silence (if not, downright COWARDICE) on this issue?

No, indeed, folks. The way things are shaping up… it looks like Norman Lowell has already won the 2024 European Elections (and this time, he even spared himself the cost of a handful of balloons).

Incredible, but true…