Leadership debates, without any debate

It’s not often a political leadership race gets compared to a scene from a Quentin Tarantino movie; so when it does happen, it’s worth reproducing the quote in full:

“[Jeremy Corbyn] has done for the [British] Labour leadership race what John Travolta did for Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction: he has jabbed an adrenaline shot into its heart and brought it back to life.”

The analogy was made by Briget Christie in ‘The Guardian’, and what I like about is so much – apart, of course, from the fact that it made me watch the movie again – is that it captures not only the drama of this particular contest; but also a certain sense of dread. 

Cast your minds back to that scene from Pulp Fiction, when Thurman has just overdosed – fatally, to all outside appearances – by accidentally snorting heroin instead of cocaine. Awful minutes of suspense follow, in preparation for a climax in which the syringe is suddenly stabbed into her thorax with all the energy of a wooden stake driven through a vampire’s heart. 

Thurman’s ‘resuscitation’ likewise looks and feels like an act of violence; she claws back to life with flailing limbs and frantic breaths, much like a deranged creature breaking through the coffin in the crypt. The entire scene is in fact just dripping with all the classic motifs of Gothic horror.

And so, of course, is the ongoing contest for the leadership of the British Labour Party: which might have been directed by no less than the late Wes Craven. You can almost feel the creeping sensation of sheer terror, as one former Labour grandee after another is wheeled out of retirement to add to an increasingly hysterical backdrop of nightmarish, apocalyptic predictions. 

Corbyn is straight out of ‘Alice in Wonderland’, according to former Prime Minister Tony Blair – which also means he is in the company of Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi, at least according to former Economy Minister Tonio Fenech – and much more beside, he is also a Trotskyite, a threat to national security, and a man who wears jerseys knitted for him by his mum… so the prospect of him becoming the next Labour leader is naturally a surrealist nightmare of the kind you’d only get on Elm Street.

But you can detect the urgency and vitality underpinning the Pulp Fiction comparison, too. The leadership debate may have sprung to life in an unsightly explosion of blood and gore; but the important thing is that it is now ALIVE – “Alive, I tell you!” – and getting more interesting by the minute.

I won’t go into the merits of the various contestants – as an outside spectator, it makes no difference to me whether Jeremy Corbyn leads the Labour party over the edge of an abyss, or whether that privilege will fall to someone else. What I do find intriguing, however, is that in demanding to be answered, the question automatically raises others which transcend the leadership race itself. 

For better or worse, the British Labour electorate is now confronted with a choice, not merely between a bearded left-wing guru and an assortment of (largely identical) centre-moderate alternatives… but between different possible future alignments of the entire party, which in turn may have different possible ramifications for the entire country. 

Looked at from the outside, it resembles a struggle for the ‘soul’ of Labour… and that, too, is a motif straight out of Damien: the Omen. In grappling with this decision, the UK is confronted with age-old questions that should really be at the heart of any party leadership debate (yet rarely ever are): questions about social, fiscal and economic policy; foreign relations; revising or reinventing Great Britain’s place in the wider world, etc. 

In a word, the ‘bigger picture’: which is all too often shut out of view, as political parties invariably get lost in a discussion dominated only by the pressing, bottom-line impulse to ‘win elections at all costs’.

Watching this contest from afar, I can’t help feeling jealous at the sight of a country actively tackling all these questions head on. Comparisons are perhaps inevitable… and when I look back at how the same contests tend to unfold locally, about the closest you’d get to a Pulp Fiction moment are the ‘uncomfortable silences’ that Uma Thurman talks about shortly before her brush with drug-induced death.

The same issues never even crop up here; the questions are not even remotely dreamed of, still less asked. When either the Nationalist or Labour Parties convene to choose a leader, the decision is invariably treated as a private, internal matter in which the wider public has no stake at all. Even though the same dynamic underpinning the British debate is perfectly applicable to the local scenario – where the choice between one or another possible leader could spell huge, epochal changes to the entire socio-political continuum…. we just never get round to debating these differences at all.

For argument’s sake, let’s look at the most recent leadership battles within those two parties. Chronologically, Labour comes first: having replaced Alfred Sant with Joseph Muscat in 2008. And while some might argue it was a foregone conclusion, given the huge exposure Muscat had garnered from his time at One TV (and his perceived closeness to Sant), the contest itself did have its occasional twists and turns. 

For instance, Muscat was denied an outright victory at first vote by veteran George Abela: the only one of five contestants to actually give the 36-year-old a run for his money. And in this stand-off there was something of a ‘generational clash’. Ironically (given that Muscat’s motto was ‘Winning Generation’) it was the much older Abela who was perceived to represent the bolder ideological break with Sant. He had clashed with the former Prime Minister during the ‘96-98 administration, and thus came across as the dark horse who might upset a carefully built-up institutional apple-cart.

Naturally we will never know how things would have panned out had Abela won in 2008; but we can get a rough idea from his later stint as President of the Republic. Certainly, as Labour leader Abela would not have backed Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s private member’s bill on divorce (as Muscat did in 2011). Nor would Labour have invested so much in projecting itself as a ‘progressive liberal movement’.

So yes; the opportunity for a dramatically enlivened debate, centring on the future of Labour’s ‘soul’, could certainly have been built on the platform of that contest. But it wasn’t. When rival candidates crossed swords in public, their arguments fizzled out into meaningless soundbites about ‘loyalty’ and ‘dependability’. Just look at their electoral slogans: “With experience and loyalty together for success” (Michael Falzon); “Ready to lead and to serve” (Evarist Bartolo). “Keeping close to the people” (Marie-Lousie Coleiro Preca). 

Not a single one gives any indication of what the party might actually evolve into under their leadership. Instead, they just roll out the same mindless clichés we’ve all been hearing for decades.

And certainly, at no point was there any wider discussion involving the Labour electorate at large. The result was a tightly-controlled contest in which the decision was taken by limited numbers of ‘party counsellor’; and in which most of the ‘discussion’ took place between rival factions behind closed doors. Clearly, the opportunity to properly thrash out important issues was wasted. 

Over to the PN now, and there is precious little that is different to report. Busuttil’s ascendancy was perhaps slightly more predictable than Muscat’s: he had made a name for himself within the rank and file by sweeping the floor with all rivals in the 2004 MEP elections; he had been anointed deputy leader just months before the 2013 election, and was the foremost face of the Nationalist Party throughout the campaign. So the crown was already on his head before the starting pistol was even fired.

Still, the contest was not free from random diversions from the script. The closest rival (and the only one with a discernible party ‘faction’ behind him) was arguably Mario De Marco; and it is significant that the Labour media are now trying to engender dissent between the two leadership rivals. It’s difficult to talk of any real ideological differences here – because, again, ‘ideology’ was never really discussed in the campaign – but the two aspiring leaders would definitely have brought with them a different style to the role. 

Either way, a different leadership choice could have had serious long-term ramifications for the PN as a whole; yet the choice itself was presented to the wider public as ‘just another internal decision’: to be taken by an even smaller number of paters delegates this time, without (apparently) bothering too much with what Nationalist voters may actually have preferred. [De Marco was ahead in opinion polls at the time].

What made this contest slightly less unmemorable, however, was the surprise entry of a complete outsider to the links: Raymond Bugeja, a 61-year-old businessman with no past political involvement of any kind whatsoever. Here, the potential for broadening the discussion beyond internal party mechanics was even greater. Bugeja may not have had the same charisma as Jeremy Corbyn, and certainly never had the same chance of actually going on to win. But, like Travolta’s adrenaline jab in Pulp Fiction, his candidature could have injected the discussion with a healthy dose of meaningful debate.

There was much to be discussed, too. The PN needed to reinvent itself after its past identity spontaneously combusted over 25 years of (almost) uninterrupted power. What style of leadership would be best to achieve this possibly life-saving intervention? What sort of experience and ideas might be needed, for the transformation to be successful? 

In both Labour and Nationalist scenarios, the sort of debate ignited by these and other questions might have forced the parties – and indeed the entire country – to take a step back and look beyond the usual ‘us against them’ dynamic that has underpinned all political discussion for decades. 

But they were never really asked. Having fatally overdosed on a political model that is well past its-sell-by date, neither Labour nor PN was ever truly resuscitated with a well-timed jab of adrenaline. To all intents and purposes, they are in fact dead – or at least, devoid of any real sense of identity, beyond ‘not the other’ – though it may take them a while to realise it.

There are indications, however, that things may start panning out slightly differently in future. Perhaps the most intriguing decision taken by Simon Busuttil since becoming party leader was to dramatically enlarge the pool of decision-makers when it comes to electing future PN leaders (starting with his own successor). It remains to be seen whether this will in any way impact the decision-making process; but one thing it will definitely do is increase the number of people actually taking part in the discussion… and that may in turn also broaden the parameters of the entire debate.

Until then, however, the chances of actually having a vibrant, epochal discussion of our own – like the one that is proving so interesting in UK right now – are practically zero. So I may as well order another bucket of popcorn, and carry on enjoying the spectacle from afar…