When young Tony Blair took over the reins of government following a long Tory spell in power, he brought with him a sense of renewal. His spin doctors were quick to cash in on the national mood and I am sure that many readers of this paper remember the Cool Britannia slogan that was given at the end of the century to the transient London scene.

With hindsight we now know that it was not just the London culture of the time or Tony Blair’s youthful looks that proved to be transient. Tony eventually jumped ship and left it to the hapless Gordon Brown to try and avoid the breakers. Gordon at least managed to force the Tories into an unlikely partnership with a smaller party whose ideology was nearer to that of the Labour Party – at least while in Opposition.

Not to be outdone, here in Malta we substituted the word Cool for Smart. I am however looking at the implications more from a social rather than a political point of view. My closest friends keep telling me to stop obsessing about values and the loss of those homespun qualities that our people developed over the millennia to help them cope with their restricted environment. I must admit I find it difficult to happily ride the Cool/Smart wave that has engulfed us. Perhaps my work as a doctor does not help, for it obliges me to treat the broken parts of our society that are not visible at times to the keenest observer of human affairs. Should I try to become Cool?

In the little surgery where I spend most of the day, I am often forced to witness the end results of the dubious values that are flaunted, banner-like, by those who really should know better. I witness daily the results of widespread infidelity that has nothing to do with divorce issues. I have to treat sexually transmitted diseases, refuse requests for abortions that seem to lie quite lightly on the conscience, cope with the blind plunge of so many into single motherhood and agonise over the way children have come to be looked upon as symbols intended to grant respectability to the numerous forms of relationships on the market. This is smart Malta.

I have witnessed a Church I was brought up to respect gasp for breath as it tries to avoid drowning in the quicksand of scandal, internal disagreement over its role, the challenge of innumerable scientific discoveries and a new enlightenment that is atheistic and forcefully secular. Am I too old to join Cool Malta?

I have witnessed our society lose its sense of what is right and what is less right, led as it is by opinion writers who have become the new truth even if it is a kaleidoscopic one reflecting different backgrounds and agendas. I have witnessed the miracle of born-again people coming from all levels of society whose nimble footwork has seemingly blotted out old backgrounds from the collective mind.

I have seen a legal system fracture at the very top. However, once the press lost interest, the sad events were soon pushed out of sight and nobody cares any more whether justice has actually triumphed. I have seen a Police Corps that, apart from the inevitable failings due to the human material it has to deploy, seemed unnaturally oblivious to the creation of an empire of violent crime allegedly created under its very nose by a former member of the force. Can anything be more cool than that?

As the island prepares to fracture even further over the issue of divorce, the controversial increase in ministers’ salaries and the persistent accusations of allegedly corrupt tenders, a rising cost of living that is hurting more and more people although it seems to be invisible to most eyes, a construction industry that has been allowed to run mad while hardly embellishing the face of Malta and Gozo in the process, but significantly extending the class of the nouveau riche, is it still smart to be cool?

Cool has had a long incubation period. It now seems to be in the process of becoming the dominant type of relation between people in Western societies, a new secular virtue. No one wants to be good any more, they want to be Cool (or Smart in Malta), and this desire is no longer confined to teenagers but can be found in a sizeable minority even of the over-50s who were permanently affected by the ‘60s counter-culture. If Cool is the new virtue, then the worst sin you can commit against it is to be ‘judgemental’, that is, to make disparaging value judgements about someone else’s lifestyle.

And talking of being judgemental leads me to end this contribution with an interesting anecdote. A university student writes in an examination that Columbus received a hearty welcome on his return to Spain. When asked why he made such an egregious historical error, he points to the textbook, which states quite clearly that the explorer had received “a cool reception”. That’s Cool or Smart for you!