What Labour Needs To Do To Avoid The Same Fate As GonziPN And Win A Fifth Term

No Maltese government has ever been here before. A fourth consecutive legislature. A majority that, by any historical measure, should not exist. Robert Abela stood in front of his supporters last Sunday and called it the start of a new chapter. Perhaps. But before Labour starts writing the next one, it should spend some time understanding the chapter it has just finished. The Nationalist Party undoubtedly made gains. Alex Borg has given it energy, improved its performance and, for the first time in years, created a sense that Labour’s dominance is not entirely inevitable. But Saturday’s result was not a breakthrough. It was a recovery. The PN emerged stronger than before, yet still far from a position where it can credibly claim to be on the verge of government. Yet the most interesting question raised by this election is not whether the PN is ready for government. It is why some of the voters who once made Labour unstoppable are beginning to look elsewhere. Labour came to power in 2013 with a generation that wanted a different Malta. They wanted a country that worked better, institutions that felt less partisan, opportunities that were not determined by who you knew, and a political class that seemed willing to challenge an increasingly tired status quo. They also wanted more opportunity than they felt they had, more civil liberties and a country that felt as modern and open as the European capitals they had become increasingly accustomed to travelling, studying and working in. Joseph Muscat understood that mood and built a coalition around it. Labour did not simply win traditional Labour voters. It attracted young people, floating voters and many who had spent their entire lives voting Nationalist. Thirteen years later, another generation is beginning to ask for many of the same things. That does not mean Labour is in the same position as the last Nationalist administration. The circumstances are entirely different. The economy is stronger. Living standards are higher. The government enjoys a parliamentary majority that Lawrence Gonzi could only dream of. But political cycles rarely repeat themselves exactly. What tends to repeat are the pressures that build up around long periods in power. Labour’s real challenge is the same one it has faced for years: managing the consequences of its own success. Economic growth, population growth and political dominance have delivered obvious benefits, but they have also created pressures that voters increasingly experience in their daily lives. Housing, planning, infrastructure, traffic, public services and institutional trust. The question is not whether those frustrations exist. It is whether Labour can begin addressing them faster than they accumulate. The favour economy sits at the centre of this problem. It is not a Labour invention. It predates Joseph Muscat, Robert Abela and arguably the modern Maltese state itself. It is a bipartisan tradition woven into how both parties have historically understood power. You win government, distribute its benefits and create enough people with a stake in your continued success that removing you feels risky. Planning permits, government jobs, contracts, exemptions, access and proximity all become part of the political ecosystem. People learn that the quickest route to solving a problem is not always through the system itself, but through whoever happens to be governing. This is not said as a scandal. It is a structural observation. The uncomfortable reality is that the incentives push every government in the same direction. Nobody enters Castille promising to preserve the system. Every incoming administration speaks the language of meritocracy, transparency and reform. Yet governments quickly discover that the very networks that help them gain power also make reform politically expensive. Many people were naïve enough to believe Joseph Muscat could usher Malta into an era governed entirely by merit and rules. In reality, a Labour Party that had spent almost a quarter century in opposition was never going to ignore the expectations of supporters who had spent years watching others benefit from proximity to power. Equally, if the PN returned to government tomorrow, it would face many of the same pressures. That is how the game has been played for decades. The problem is that every long-governing party eventually becomes a manager of the system rather than a challenger of it. Favours accumulate. Exceptions multiply. Decisions become harder because more people benefit from things remaining exactly as they are. The temptation is always to postpone reform for another day. Eventually another day arrives anyway. What makes Labour’s position unusual is that it may have created the conditions to break that cycle. Not simply the electoral cycle, but the cycle of low expectations that has shaped Maltese politics for decades — the assumption that favours, exceptions and political mediation are unavoidable features of public life rather than symptoms of institutions that never quite work as they should. The government has been in power so long, and presided over such sustained economic growth, that many voters are less dependent on political intervention than previous generations were. Malta is wealthier. Opportunities are broader. More people have alternatives. When an economy is stagnating, accountability often feels like a threat. When an economy is growing, people become more willing to tolerate rules, enforcement and standards because they do not see them as obstacles to survival. This is where the comparison with the final years of the Gonzi administration becomes relevant. One of the difficulties facing that government was that many of the decisions required to improve governance arrived when economic conditions were deteriorating and political capital was running out. Tightening rules, enforcing standards and telling people no becomes significantly harder when people already feel constrained. Labour finds itself in the opposite position. It can afford to make difficult decisions from a position of strength. The clearest evidence that this opportunity exists can be found among younger voters. Labour gave sixteen-year-olds the vote. It now governs a generation that has spent its entire life under Labour administrations. They have no memory of pre-2013 Malta. They did not experience Labour as an insurgent movement promising change. They inherited Labour as the establishment. And after four consecutive legislatures in power, it is probably time Labour stopped trying to have it both ways. Governments do not get to spend over a decade in office, boast about their dominance and still present themselves as outsiders battling the system. At some point, they become the system. Older voters often evaluate governments comparatively. They remember previous administrations, keep score and gradually accept that many frustrations are simply part of political life. Younger voters tend to evaluate governments functionally. They compare Malta not to what came before, but to what they think it should become. Their reference points are not partisan loyalties. They are housing affordability, public spaces, functioning infrastructure, career opportunities and institutions that work. The question is not who helped me. It is why this doesn’t function. Alex Borg’s growing appeal among younger voters matters for precisely this reason. Not because he is about to become Prime Minister, but because he is beginning to attract the same type of voter that once helped Labour sweep to power. The mistake would be to conclude that young people are somehow more virtuous than the generations that came before them. They are not. Today’s adults were yesterday’s idealistic youths. Every generation begins by wanting meritocracy, accountability and standards. Over time many adapt to the incentives around them. The question is whether Labour can use this moment to change those incentives before the cycle repeats itself once again. That is why the election result matters. The temptation, facing a stronger opposition, is to double down on the methods that have delivered four consecutive victories. To distribute more widely, expand networks further and make change feel riskier. But people voted Labour last Saturday with a fairly clear-eyed understanding of what they were getting. The economic performance alongside the things that do not work. The opportunities alongside the frustrations. The progress alongside the costs. The mandate Labour now holds is large enough to do things that hurt in the short term. That may sound counterintuitive after a result that saw its majority halved, but the more remarkable fact is that after three legislatures in government, and despite all the frustrations that have accumulated along the way, Labour still enjoys a twenty-thousand-vote advantage. It could reform the planning authority in ways that displease people who have benefited from its discretion. It could strengthen institutions in ways that reduce political influence. It could build a public administration where rules matter more than relationships. None of these decisions would be universally popular. But they are precisely the sort of decisions that governments usually avoid until they become unavoidable. That is the lesson Labour should take from GonziPN. Not that difficult decisions are politically painless, nor that reform guarantees electoral success. It is that when you are facing an Opposition leader who can communicate clearly and capture the country’s attention, the worst thing you can do is give him material. Once he can point to visible failures, articulate what many people already know to be true, and make the government look incapable of fixing them, dominance can start to look like decay very quickly. Labour still has something few governments ever possess: the political space to make difficult choices before circumstances make them unavoidable. Labour came to power because a generation wanted a different Malta. Thirteen years later, another generation is beginning to ask for many of the same things. The question is whether Labour sees that as a warning or an opportunity. •