Our Juncker, Our Schulz

In recent weeks I read with interest the debate on the international affiliation of two sister parties of the PN and PL: the Belgian Christian Democrats and British Labour. 

In Belgium, the Christian Democrats are increasingly uncomfortable with the right-wing direction of the EPP and are expressing interest in the formation of a new centre-left grouping. On the other hand, British Labour is increasingly uncomfortable with Martin Schulz’s federalist direction.

Asked whether he would be  at ease sitting next to politicians such as Hungary’s Orban or Italy’s Berlusconi Claude Rolin, a former Belgian trade unionist who is now running as a Christian democratic MEP candidate was categorical: “I have clearly no common ground with the people you’ve just mentioned and with their parties. So we need to have a real debate: either the EPP is able to find a sense of social progress or indeed as a party in the CDH we will have to ask ourselves where our place is."

He is also critical of the austerity model pushed by the EPP: “We want to turn our back to austerity and put in place social policies, intelligent economic policies which will make it possible to have a real economic recovery through employment oriented investments, and sustainable employment.”

According to Rolin  the priority of the next Commission should be the tax on financial transactions, something which is opposed by the PN and PL locally. “This  is an indispensable element. It is time to put it in place, because it is economically intelligent; but also because it will bring equity and trust”.

In Malta it was the late Fr Peter Serracino Inglott who in 2009 openly questioned the identification of the PN with the more neo-liberal orientation of the European People's Party, which he described as being more right than centre-right.

"The increased relative majority obtained by the Popular Party cannot be considered to be a victory of Christian Democracy… Even my life-long friend, Guido de Marco, who is above any suspicion of being a Marxist, defined his position on the political spectrum as being centre-left. The dominant group in the Popular Party is now rather more right than centre-right".

In this sense the affiliation with the  EPP contradicts the PN’s transformation in to a centrist mass movement which shunned Thatcherism in the 1980s. It is true that the EPP contains right-wing, centrist and a few centre-left parties, but over the past years it has drifted to the right.

While EPP membership strengthens the party’s clout in Europe, its identification with the European right-wing weakens the party’s social credentials. Moreover in the next elections, the EPP will carry the responsibility for backing EC president José Barroso's neoliberal agenda  which has impoverished entire countries like Greece.

In a local context where the Labour Party has outflanked the PN from the right, the PN faces an ideological quandary. Faced with the privatization of energy, the privatization of public spaces, the deregulation of planning and discriminatory citizenship programmes, the PN is still incapable of presenting itself as a principled centre-left opposition.

Instead its opposition on all issues seems to be motivated by tribalism. Simon Busuttil hopes that voters of all hues will feel the big cringe when  Labour shows its true face in the next months. In reality, both voters and Labour have changed while the PN hopes to win by remaining the same. In the end, while traditional PN voters will not feel any cringe at Labour’s transformation, those who really feel the cringe will still find the PN as too conservative for their tastes.

On the other side of the Rubicon, the Labour Party whose candidates are presenting themselves a sovereignists and whose only interest in Europe is defending their national turf, are supporting the candidature of the federalist Martin Schulz.

British Labour refused to endorse Schulz's nomination at a PES conference in Rome on 1 March because it views him as an advocate of ever-closer union – anathema for British voters.  Judging by the Maltese Labour’s opposition to the Tobin Tax (financial transactions tax), a key proposal of the PES, one would have expected Maltese Labour to join their British comrades in distancing themselves from Schulz.

Instead the Maltese Labour Party is endorsing Schulz  without questioning his federalist views on matters like taxation, which is anathema to Labour. 

Unfortunately the mindframe of Maltese political parties is that their MEPs are Maltese ambassadors in the ranks of European political parties and not politicians with their own ideas about the future of Europe. In this sense the only Labour candidate who stands for something is Alfred Sant, who is consistent with his personal belief in a Europe of sovereign nations but very distant from the more federalist views of his European family.

Others like Cyrus Engerer are coming across as opportunists bent on exploiting the most parochial traits in Labour’s electorate. Ultimately the PL’s attachment to the PES is mostly folkloristic and tribal.

I bet that during the campaign we will hear a lot about migration, where the European Parliament has little say, and much less on where the candidates stand in the debate on the future of Europe and on the fiscal alternatives to austerity politics.

Perhaps Labour will propose its citizenship scheme to be included in the PES manifesto as a way of funding anti-austerity programmes. After all it was Muscat who proposed Malta as a global model in the business of selling citizenship and discriminating between the global rich and the global poor.

Probably the PN will try to turn the contest into a local one, a sort of referendum on Joseph Muscat. This is something which happens in many other countries in Europe, but which in itself speaks volumes on the gap between Brussels and voters.