With 'friends' like Lowell...

“The next time the old woman commences her reprobate conduct, tell her to hold her tongue, and mind her own business, for curses, like chickens, come home to roost.”

The ill-advised populism of the Opposition leader on asylum and immigration is finding some insalubrious supporters. I got the chance to hear the bare outline of his ideas on immigration on One TV’s Inkontri last Monday, and then I heard its echoes in the soundbites from the shadow immigration minister Michael Falzon this week at The Times debate; and finally Norman Lowell – chief clown of the far-right, holocaust denier, racist reference point for the ‘popular sentiment’ – exhorting his supporters to vote for Labour. Why? Because Muscat’s ‘national interest’ strategy is paying its dividends.

People like Lowell verbalise the racism of Maltese society, that deep source of unpleasantness in people who talk with impunity of their hatred for migrants; as well as for the confusion and anxiety of people who either find the sight of black asylum seekers unsettling, or who fear they 'take' jobs. Having said that, not everybody who is concerned about immigration is some fascist.

So Muscat hasn’t just found himself a raving nutter on YouTube. He is articulating an agenda close to that of far-right.

Maybe Muscat thinks he is voicing legitimate concerns. But bigotry and racism are not to be appeased. It cannot be appeased, it perpetuates a self-serving lie. I don’t know which self-respecting social-democrat can live with an endorsement from Lowell. What I find unsettling is that Muscat is caught napping by events while he is busy currying electoral favour with his immigration talk. I’m sure the last thing on his mind, after a week of justifying his national interest ‘policy’, was being given credence by a far-rightist.

Muscat is aware that a substantial part of his electorate is, to put it mildly, unhappy with immigration. He talks of the downfall of the European left, marginalised after having allowed xenophobes to monopolise the debate: an example would be Gordon Brown’s encounter with Gillian Duffy, which betrayed an elitist tendency to ignore immigrant fears amongst a working-class besieged by economic problems. However, even socialist parties that responded with harsh immigrant policies to counter the rise of the far-right were trounced at the polls.

Rightfully, Muscat notes that immigration should not be monopolised by the right wing. But irony of all ironies, in the week he told me that “even ex-communists voted for the racist Northern League” in the city of Turin, he finds himself, the ex-progressive, being lauded by the racist Norman Lowell. Aren’t those alarm bells ringing yet?

My suspicion is that Muscat wants to pursue a conservative immigration policy and propose limits on the reception of asylum seekers (I wouldn’t be surprised if he read David Cameron’s recent speech). Let’s hear the nuts and bolts of this vision, because it’s looking less like policy and more populist every day.

While people who are concerned about immigration should definitely be heard out, I do share Muscat’s apprehension on the way the EU appears disdainful of the particular circumstances Malta finds itself in. But Malta also received €126 million in EU funds for immigration; and the bolstering of the Office of the Commissioner for Refugees has gone a long way in making the processing of asylum claims more effective and faster.

What I find disappointing is that Muscat is not challenging and leading public opinion, and instead he prefers to exploit the Libyan exodus of asylum seekers (a one-off event so far, because when the crisis will come it will be a mass exodus of Libyan refugees). He talks of social mobility for the working class but does nothing to stop the criminalisation of the asylum seeker by our detention policy.

He says people in Marsa and Birzebbugia say “too many” (migrants, or blacks as it were); that Marsa is no longer safe for people to walk in (an old chestnut of the populist right). These statements fuel the misrepresentation of asylum seekers who find themselves in Marsa and Birzebbugia because of the proximity of the open centres where they reside. Why vent this racist suspicion of migrants?

He accused the government of not being tough with the EU and appeasing its non-action: “we save people to incarcerate them”. This statement would have been a masterstroke, so why doesn’t he speak out against detention if he sees it to be such a reprehensible antipode to our search and rescue efforts?

He talks of limits on migration, but what kind of limit and which migrants? For eight years since EU accession Malta has never imposed a limit on free movement of EU citizens seeking work here or Eastern European economic migrants – how do we limit the intake of asylum seekers?

He doesn’t take a clear stand of condemnation of the illegal Italian pushbacks (blessed by the EU...), instead treating it like a blessing in disguise for Malta and describing Silvio Berlusconi as "the only one in Europe who understood the situation in the Mediterranean".

An interesting addition to his repertoire was his complaint that while the Libyan no-fly zone took a matter of weeks to be installed, nobody says anything about the Al Shabab in Somalia and that Malta must place such countries of migratory origin high on the EU agenda. I couldn’t agree more. I hope this isn’t just tokenism: Labour has a spokesperson on international development and international development aid, Noel Farrugia (formerly agriculture spokesperson) who hasn’t yet said one word on African migration. Not a word on Malta’s overseas development aid figures. Shameful really.

Unfortunately, what we are getting on immigration is a ridiculous zero-sum game between the Nationalist government and Labour. Muscat’s national interest talk was followed by a week of stupid government spin demonising him as the new monster of the far-right. Muscat retorted, saying the Nationalists should answer for the controversial 2002 refoulement of Eritreans (spun earlier in the week on l-orizzont).

Again, I ask – why not take the Nationalists to task over the hideous conditions of detention? Why not attack their support of the illegal pushbacks? Obviously, the moral high ground is not Labour’s to take. Norman Lowell knows that well enough.