Hobson’s choice or waiting for Godot?

Successful leaders tend to be big personalities who dominate their party’s organisation, policy development and electoral campaigns. But does that control come with a price? Political parties will go through a period of leadership instability and electoral decline after strong leaders step down.

Eddie Fenech Adami was undoubtedly a strong leader; his influence on the PN was near-complete. He dominated the party organisation, party policy and electoral strategy. Under Eddie, the party got its best ever electoral results and he broadened its base to make it attractive to working-class support that had traditionally only voted Labour.

In the period after he left office, the party struggled with internal divisions and poor election results. It committed political suicide. This might have been an indirect result of his dominance. As leader, he suppressed debate on issues that divided the party, but those divisions remained and festered. As leader, he effectively removed any challengers, in part by outliving them.

Thereafter, Lawrence Gonzi won an election the PN was widely expected to lose, but then he struggled to stop the divisions in the party from bringing down his government. When the 2013 election came, the PN was annihilated by the Labour movement. It went through three leaders in quick succession and lost two more elections with only hints of recovery.

The British tell a story that has surprising contemporary insight.

In 17th-century England, Thomas Hobson kept a livery stable of 40 horses that he rented out for the ride between Cambridge and London. The size of the stable itself implied that there would be high-quality horses for travellers to choose from for the 64-mile ride. But no.

Hobson insisted that renters had one choice and one choice only: they could have the horse nearest the stable door. Otherwise, his best horses would be overworked and overrun.

It was a "take it or leave it" proposition. To find oneself confronted with one decision in what seemed to offer a plethora of options came over the years to be called a "Hobson's choice."

This appears to be the current position within the PN when it comes to deciding who and when a potential winning successor to Bernard Grech’s leadership should take place. Among all possible candidates, and as surveys have shown on more than one occasion, Roberta Metsola is considered Hobson's choice.

She was first elected as a Member of the European Parliament in 2013 and served as the First Vice President of the European Parliament in November 2020. Her journey in politics began as one of the two vice presidents of the executive board of the Youth Convention on the Future of Europe. She was also actively involved in the campaigning for the 2003 EU membership referendum. Her participation during the referendum campaign was recognised by Malta’s Prime Minister, Lawrence Gonzi. Metsola was encouraged to apply for the 2004 European election as a candidate for the National Party. She failed to make it again in the 2009 European election but was subsequently elected in a casual election in 2013 when Simon Busuttil resigned to become PN leader.

Metsola is best known for her boldness and determinant qualities. She is also known as the bridge-builder, as her election to the presidency of the parliament was consensual and conflict-free.

As a member of the European Parliament, her involvement was significant in leading EPP representation that advocated against gender-based discrimination. Her role during the European migrant crisis in 2016 was also crucial to establishing a new EU-wide approach to connecting EU and non-EU countries. She also openly condemned the Maltese government after the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and advocated for media freedom and the fight against corruption.

But what if Metsola shows no interest in taking the reins of a likely never-to-be-in-government party? Potential candidates to challenge Grech’s leadership can hardly be qualified as heavyweights. The PN’s political ethos puts heavyweights like Metsola on the horns of a dilemma. Either she remains in the party and plays second fiddle to the top leadership, or she quits it in case she is not willing to grin and bear her position in the party’s pecking order. But if she opts to call it quits, she might be faced with a dilemma the only way out of which would be to set up her own party and become a leader in her own right.

Of course, such a scenario can only be envisaged in the event that Metsola decides to call it a day in her political career on the European and international scene.

Consequently, in such an eventuality, what might become of the PN leadership crisis? The question is: What criteria will there be inside those interested in running and contesting that will determine which of them brings the qualities that are best for the party, for now, and for the country later on, and for what they want Malta to be? And where will they go to find criteria that they know are tried-and-true? Which values can possibly bring the PN back from the brink?

Until satisfactory answers are found to those questions, the PN risks continuing to wait for Godot, living without a sense of meaning, value or truth, and mired in directional loss and hopelessness.