I’m not particularly gripped by referendum fever. Much as I would like to engage in an intellectual discussion about it, I really have little to add. I am not awaiting the outcome of the referendum with any trepidation or anxiety and I am quite decidedly voting ‘No’ for reasons I have publically discussed.
What I am nervous about is the general effect of the debate on Maltese community and social interaction – the long-term issue with putting a question on a minority cultural practice such as this one to a referendum. This has always been about more than safeguarding our environment; in fact it is this part of the debate that has been most lacking. The ‘No’ campaign quickly recognised this and, in response, appealed to ‘civilisation’ (for want of a better word). To generate more interest, it presented itself as the more ‘developed’ and ‘rational’ body of thought in the spring hunting debate, advancing the assumption that those who engage in spring hunting are necessarily ‘uncivilised’: vote No, vote to be ‘civilised’, be part of the ‘civilised’ tribe.
And, no matter how personally fervently against spring hunting I am, this was always going to be a deeply unconstructive consequence of the campaign. I am, however, hardly surprised, given that Maltese elections very similarly maximise this tribal, hostile and divisive approach to politics that often misses the political point. The disjointedness in society that this will inevitably create will be made all the more clear once the outcome of the referendum is announced.
But, as I said, there is nothing much to add here except for “let’s wait and see”.
Meanwhile in Britain…
As a little break from the Maltese political scene, I have spent quite a significant amount of time in the last few months getting pretty riled about the forthcoming British elections. This week the UK Parliament was dissolved and edicts across the country called for an election in its 650 constituencies. Perhaps the most notably frustrating feature of elections in Britain is its ‘first past the post’ voting system that exacerbates a two-party divide and results in the attribution of a disproportionate number of parliamentary seats to these two bigger parties.
It is an archaic system, to say the least, but it is not the only aspect of British politics that is still stuck in the past. The flaccid rhetoric of British politicians betrays a country that is inwardly deflated and outwardly detached. Most party leaders regurgitate stock phrases and policies that are somewhat lost in the drama and intrigue that the immigration debate generates and, often as a consequence, gets caught up on the question of continued membership to the EU.
Maybe, though, this isn’t such a terrible thing.
The Farage Effect
A disastrously misguided campaign by the Conservative party, led by David Cameron, has essentially steamrolled any semblance of productive communication between the UK and the rest of the EU over the past five years. Cameron has emerged as weak on Europe precisely because he is very clearly unconvinced of the value of ruffling the EU’s feathers. His party has promised an in/out referendum by 2017 on continued EU membership if it is placed back at the helm. The British are really talking about Europe now. This time, however, they are taking it seriously as a tangible political force rather than just another institutional attempt to keep up diplomatic appearances.
What is evident, though, is that the EU is topical in the UK not because it is particularly contentious – the vast majority of the British public is woefully misinformed about the EU and its interest in the institution is grossly over-estimated. Political point-scoring in Britain has, for decades, ground down sensible debate on the value of the EU as anything but a ‘marketplace’, something that suited its self-perception as the political giant in the region. However, this view of the EU clearly no longer exists save for inside the minds of an empire-nostalgic few. Britain’s future is inextricable from the EU and the 2015 election campaign has, perhaps inadvertently at times, crystallised this fact.
Thus, UKIP’s Nigel Farage has actually done the EU a big favour. Political consciousness of the EU in the UK has always been relatively scatty and non-committal but we have seen almost every party leader, even David Cameron himself, say unequivocally that the UK cannot afford to leave the EU. So, ironically, Farage seems to have unwittingly united the body politic on a question that has plagued British politics for decades and the effect of this should not be underestimated.
The UK’s political class has, largely, come out against UKIP’s racist and irrational rhetoric on Europe. It is hoped that this will serve to reboot its currently weak relations with the EU in the long run. However, it remains to be seen whether the bigger parties’ choice to attack one of the EU’s core pillars, the freedom of movement for workers, is really just trumped up showmanship to appear tough on border control. Let’s hope so because, after all, the leaders must know that there is nothing they can do about it without leaving the EU. There is value in presenting an impossible ‘solution’ to the EU ‘migration problem’ during the election campaign if it means a) keeping UKIP out of Parliament, b) long-term re-engagement with Europe and c) avoiding Brexit altogether.
An end to isolationism
The electoral conversation in Britain has made it clear that the EU is permeating political consciousness more than ever before. A couple of decades ago it was a non-entity, a joke – now it is an unavoidable political organism woven tightly into national politics. The economic crisis has demonstrated that EU member states cannot help but use it as a talisman. And it seems to be dragging its constituent parts kicking and screaming into a 21st century way of doing politics that relies heavily on the power of communitarian resolve. Contrary to popular belief, this does not herald the demise of the nation-state, but offers a re-imagining of it as dependent on external engagement rather than pig-headed and uncompromising isolationism.
It looks as if it’s going to be an interesting month.