Despite the differences in size, geography, culture and history that exist between the UK and Malta, the recent watershed UK elections have shown that there are still aspects of governance that we would do well to examine and learn from.

Ministerial pay freeze

At his first Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister David Cameron redeemed his electoral promise of not only freezing ministerial salaries for the next five years, but of actually cutting them by five per cent. This will hardly beggar ministers of course, but in view of the recent parliamentary scandals as well as the harsh measures that need to be applied if the country is to start dismantling its debt mountain, it is an expression of solidarity that will go some way towards reducing popular ill-will. We have yet to see that kind of political leadership in Malta.

The Civil Service

When it became clear that no party had gained an overall majority, Gordon Brown asked Sir Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet secretary, to provide support to the parties involved in negotiations. Sir Gus was of course working with the private secretaries of the Queen and the Prime Minister. They facilitated the meetings but were not involved in active negotiation, for in the UK, civil servants are non-party political appointments and are required to serve whatever government is in place.

With our British civil service inheritance in tatters, would the present service ever be trusted by any local politician to act as a facilitator?

Maltese politicians have found it convenient to politicise this grand old service with the result that any new administration can hardly be blamed for changing those it found at the helm. Alfred Sant opted to avoid this political bloodletting and apparently got little thanks in return.

The Third Party

The Lib Dems were formed in 1988. True to the traditional two-party political culture of the UK, it has taken this unlikely mixture of social democrats and liberals a very long time indeed to have any real say in government. The first-past-the-post electoral system was always intended to provide strong government and limit the success of third parties. Malta has a different way of protecting its own oligarchic system.

The recent elections were a contest between parties tarnished by scandal after scandal in parliament and the citizens of the UK decided on retribution. They gave the country a hung parliament and basically told the politicians that they had lost their trust and it was up to them to try and recover it by bringing in reform.

This could only be done because there was a third party in parliament of some strength which voters could use as a lever to prise open the ingrained systems that obviously need reform.

A coalition government

When you mention this in our local context, both parties throw up their arms in horror. British politicians did the same of course. Over here the question asked of the electorate, in order to stave off this possibility, is whether people want Malta to become like Italy, knowing full well that Italy’s old reputation for having governments that only lasted from a few weeks to a few months was well ingrained, both locally and internationally.

This question too was put by a Sky interviewer to one of the myriad politicians, journalists and experts whose on-screen opinions helped fill in the time until the political impasse was resolved and a Lib Dem/Conservative coalition hammered out. One perspicacious politician answered by asking his viewers to look at Germany, a country ruled by coalitions which had helped the shattered economy to pull itself up to become the paymaster of the EU. The politician went on to state that he would not mind a coalition if the UK were to reach the same level of development, prosperity and prestige. This was the right and proper answer for a politician to give, for duty to one’s country should always take precedence over allegiance to a party.

How many Maltese citizens are indeed aware of the fact that most of the member states of the EU have a history of successful coalition governments? It is a knowledge that could prove to be beneficial should Malta ever break the mould.

Market democracy is fragile

The interest underpinning the UK elections is part of the continuous debate on the future and direction of parliamentary democracy. One must remember that a prototype democracy started in Athens but was then put on hold for 2000 years. Apparently nobody saw much value for it during that period. Even as late as 1941, there were only 11 parliamentary democracies around the world and there was very little expectation that democracy would survive the last war, especially in the face of a Hitler-Stalin alliance. These parliamentary democracies were far from being what they should have been: in the UK it was the suffragette protest and workers’ militancy that persuaded parliament to grant new freedoms. After the war, because of the USA’s commitment to democracy in the face of the growing Communist threat, democratic power-sharing triumphed and spread across the five continents, inspiring Fukuyama to declare the end of history. It was not to be so.

In the 1990s, many attempts were made to establish democracies in newly freed countries. The experiment was far from universally successful as we can see from the present chaos in Iraq. The reasons for this are legion but one thing is sure. Democracy is not a plant that will grow without constant watering.

There is another danger. Non-market democracies are rare and generally do not last. This suggests that a reasonable per capita income for each and every citizen is an imperative. A market democracy is intimately tied to a decent standard of living for one and all. But over the last 15 years a hugely disproportionate share of the rewards from economic growth has accrued to those at the top, led by boardroom executives and senior bankers. This dramatic rise in boardroom pay does not reflect share performance.

Another group to have attracted outsized rewards is found in the financial services industry. Globally, pay in the financial sector has risen far more rapidly than across the different economies as a whole. But as Andrew Haldane of the Bank of England has convincingly demonstrated, the huge rise in the sector’s profitability and the subsequent growth in remuneration was the product of increased borrowing and not an improved return on assets. The latter requires skill, the former does not.

When push comes to shove, in a market economy it is taxation together with the growing gap between the rich and the poor that provokes citizens to demand accountability. In Malta we are being increasingly burdened with both while accountability is still a dream.

So two questions naturally follow:

Can political equality survive financial inequalities?

Has anyone ever fought for capitalism rather than for democracy?