Eurosceptics on a ticket to Brussels? Let’s turn it into a movie

The irony of Alfred Sant running for the 2014 European elections has not been lost on the Nationalist Party.

Announcing he will not run in the next general elections, Sant, 64, may have been the Labour prime minister who froze Malta's application to become an EU member in 1996 upon election.

But his command of European affairs and his ability to sift through the detritus of the EU's bloated budgets can still serve his constituents well.

Only the keenest of political observers would admire his assiduous carving up of the European Stability Pact in the House of Representatives, where single-handedly Sant exhausted Finance Minister Tonio Fenech with his nit-picking of yet another legislative instrument which had to painfully endure his diligent analysis.

But to many supporters of EU accession, Sant will forever remain etched in their memory as the keenest of opponents of membership - the man who threatened enlargement commissioner Gunther Verheugen to keep his comments in check lest he find his tongue snipped; the man who erroneously predicted the closure of major factories (which never materialised save for the threat of the financial crisis in 2008); the politician who said Malta's funds from the EU would amount to a mere €4 million (compared that to Gonzi's current battle to secure nothing less than €800 million) and who said a minnow like Malta would never have any influence inside a club ruled by Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande.

Whether he was an imperfect Nostradamus or a misunderstood Cassandra, this Harvard-educated, former Brussels second-secretary charged with EEC relations, accomplished playwright and novelist, and leader of the Labour Party from 1992 to 2008, may certainly be more of an ideal candidate for MEP than some other pretenders to the cushy €84,000 job.

Like him, so many other former prime ministers and Opposition leaders made a move to Brussels, bringing in their political experience to a new forum: Labour opposition leader Neil Kinnock hung up his hat to take up an MEPs' seat, and former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt is today the leader of the European liberal-democrats.

Much like the Labour electoral machine put its weight behind Joseph Cuschieri, the MP who gave his seat up for the co-option of Labour leader Joseph Muscat to parliament, for his election as MEP; the same can be expected for Alfred Sant. Whether Sant will drift to the eurosceptic wing of the Socialists & Democrats or, perhaps more unlikely, become a Maltese Nigel Farage (anti-EU soothsayer living off the Brussels gravy train), is yet to be seen.

If this tragi-comedy needs even more twists, it is that it had to be one of the supporters of Malta's accession to the EU - Tonio Borg - who had to face the humiliating scepticism of MEPs to his nomination as Commissioner for Health. Statements he made in the past that angered the gay community failed to cut the mustard with many MEPs, who demanded he make public guarantees that his conservative views on homosexuality and abortion would not interfere with his role as European Commissioner.

Borg can only last as Commissioner until 2014, if Labour gets a shot at power next year. And one of the 'papable' men for the Berlaymont building is surely veteran shadow foreign minister George Vella, the former Labour deputy leader who squirmed uneasily in his chair on 8 March, 2003: when the 'yes' vote for the EU won a historic referendum that was flatly refused by Sant. Instead, Sant - who unsuccessfully proclaimed a 'partnership' association with the EU - claimed that the referendum had been lost: adding abstentions to the 'no' voters, after having told Labour voters to shun the polls.

In the House this week, as he commented on the brusque European treatment of his right honourable colleague, Vella was measured in his words, as he conjured up a Le Carré plot in which the liberal backlash against Tonio Borg could have been authored by the same people who authored John Dalli's rude exit from the Commission.

Nothing could be further from the truth: even though Labour and its MEPs were careful to extend nothing but their full support to the Borg nomination, it was their socialist colleagues who were adamant that the conservative Borg was not suitable enough for the health affairs portfolio.

Vella has no political baggage to bog him down in the morass of so-called 'liberal' recriminations on social issues. But if in 2014 he does get to face the MEPs and sit in the hot seat that singed Borg's own behind, he may find himself having to answer one particular question: if he was so much against EU membership, why should he be appointed a prince of this same Union?

But that, as Alfred Sant would say, is a hypothetical question.