Europe is still light years away from becoming a federal state like the US. This week’s European Parliament elections are the clearest proof.

In every country, Malta included, the election is being fought on domestic issues. The same is happening in the UK, in Italy, in Germany and everywhere. How the results will mean a decision on a continental level beats me.

On a continental level, the European economy is emerging from the worst of the crisis. It is not yet out of the woods, but over the past years, it has crawled back from the abyss where many thought Greece and maybe other countries would default and exit the euro, or that the euro was destined to unravel and with it the European dream.

One would have thought this renewed vigour in the economy (although it has yet to have an impact on the widespread unemployment) would mean a vote of confidence for the governments that have taken the bit between their teeth and taken drastic steps to put the national economies on a better keel in the coming elections. Instead, it would seem that eurosceptic parties across Europe will take up a large slice of the European Parliament, from UKIP in the UK to the assorted eurosceptics in Italy and Marine Le Pen in France.

There is logic in this. Take Greece, for example: the beating the country had to endure over the past years which left people homeless. Rampant unemployment and cuts in social security have enraged countless people who have and will turn to eurosceptic Tsipras.

The lack of improvement in the French economy is driving people to vote for Le Pen, especially with her xenophobic if not racist campaign. So too in Holland, which has been one of Europe’s best performing countries.

In a way, those who will bother to vote will be voting according to their views on the national economy. Taking the cumulative impact of all these votes together will then determine the policies and the political choices of Europe as a whole, although it will be in the coming months, in the long negotiations leading to the choice of the President of the Commission, that the popular vote will be given political substance.

Before that, the peoples of Europe will have voted. And among these peoples, for the second time in our history, will be small Malta, usually the third best country when it comes to voting (the first two are countries where voting is obligatory).

In our case, Saturday’s vote will be a re-run of last year’s general election, even if there is nothing that says it should be so. The Nationalist Party is still smarting under the avalanche of votes that broke its grip on the country while the Labour Party will seek a popular confirmation of last year’s vote.

It has been said and repeated that the 4-2 result for Labour obtained in 2009 will most probably not be repeated, as that result was a fluke based on how the preferences worked out. The most that many seem to feel will happen is a 3-3 tie as it will take an even greater political earthquake than last year’s general election to turn the result to a 2-4 one.

Given that broad parameter, the two main parties still try to set themselves a target: Labour is trying to get more popular votes than the PN; the PN will try to see how many of the ‘switchers’ it has succeeded in attracting back to the fold.

I said last week that the Cyrus Engerer case is a ‘game changer’ – I was wrong, it will not change much.

Looking back at the campaign, both sides have been probing and parrying for all they are worth. It has been like one of those football games with a lot of play in the midfield but rarely, at least so far, the killer strike.

The Labour war machine is still structured on the combination that delivered last year: the Moviment + the Party. A large part of the Moviment (but hardly of the party) was the direct result of the divorce campaign which saw the PN left high and dry.

Having won the election, this Moviment pushed ahead on the gay rights issue, specifically the Civil Union Act, which again saw PN split up between those who were determined not to give in and those who were open to change.

The Cyrus Engerer case, though distasteful, did not and will not change anything. Nor will the bishops’ appeal yesterday to people to vote according to Christian values.

On the other hand, Labour may see a haemorrhage from a wide variety of sides:

• Those, inside or outside the party, who are aghast at the (many) mistakes committed by the present administration;

• Those who have not obtained what they hoped for from the deeply clientelistic Labour government while they saw others getting their remuneration, including some who definitely cannot be called Labour;

• Those who (sensibly) will not bother to vote because this election will not mean a change of government;

• There may also be those who are enraged at the increasingly autocratic ways of this government, from the Prime Minister being paid by the State for the use of his car, to the increasingly prominent roles being given to the Prime Minister’s consort, from the autocratic ways of the Minister of the Interior to the increasing and maddening use of police outriders with sirens blaring announcing the passage of ministers and/or Mrs Muscat.

The campaign, I was saying, swung from one extreme to another. In the early days, and especially after the Martin Schultz visit, Dr Muscat tried the illegal immigrants card but it soon petered out (and what can he say about it? The fact is Italy received thousands and thousands, many died at sea, but none came here – maybe more because of our detention policy than because of political rabid statements).

There had been, previously, the usual conflict regarding spring hunting with Labour nailing its standards to allow spring hunting. Again, no surprises there.

In the end, Dr Muscat was forced back to his real bedrock constituency: the many who would go miles to avoid an extra expense. Look at the Labour promise to cut down on electricity bills – although as I have argued, these things have a longer delivery timeline, and it is much too early for bills with the cuts to pop in the post box. Hence the first payment of the car registration overpayment. Hence the plethora of government and ministers running around and announcing things – just like the last days of GonziPN.

The problem, as I see it, is that Labour is a far more clientelistic mode of government than the PN (and the PN’s mistake was to try and imitate this instead of going diametrically against it). In the end, the many who got nothing out of the PN government turned against it and pulled it down. The present problem Labour is facing is that it cannot keep all the promises it made or hinted at, not after a year in government, probably not even after five.

This is, as I see it, only part of the problem. The amount of people on relief, who are unchecked (whatever they might say), is enormous. We have seen the number of registered unemployed grow in recent months (though it is still among Europe’s lowest), but maybe these are people who have (or have been told) registered for work in expectation of a government job.

So too the people who get medicines for free, who turn up at hospital for anything and everything, the people who expect top treatment because they paid taxes.

There’s more. On Thursday, the Chamber of Commerce organised a do for journalists and briefly explained its concerns about the cowboy country that has to do with people going to Sicily and coming back laden with goods not just for themselves (which would be OK according to EU laws of freedom of goods), but also for shops and all sorts of business.

As much as 13 trailers come in daily, which no one investigates, and they go straight to warehouses and unload there. In one recent case, washing machines came in without paying the eco-tax (is it true that only Malta has this tax?) which were cheaper than other washing machines on sale from regular outlets. Obviously, the authorities do not charge VAT on the contents of trailers it doesn’t know anything about. Yet when Maltese traders tried the same tactics to export to Sicily they were swiftly blocked.

On my way to the Chamber, I noticed that the Monti people have silently taken back parts of Merchants Street right up to St John’s Street. Maybe another example of this cowboy country I am speaking about.

I have no doubt this was going on under the PN, at least in the last years, but the trickle has now become a flood and there seems no will to stop it and regularise things. It’s the same mentality, as I see it, that led thousands to change a government in order to save money on electricity bills.

Ultimately, such an approach can only harm the economy. Think of the unpaid taxes or taxes that are blithely written off. There is no stopping the building of more and more apartments even if we have so many thousands lying unsold. There is no stopping the importation of more and more cars even if we will soon have to walk on cars to get anywhere. There is no stopping the opening of more and more shops even if they undersell each other, and so on.

For all its efforts, the government, put there to govern, is failing in its prime duty. Allowing everyone to have his head will lead to a situation where, having destroyed the little we have, we will end up eating each other.

Now the other party, the Nationalists, does not seem to have sensed this. The leader, Simon Busuttil, became really popular with the PN core and with many outside it for his forceful rejection of IIP, but otherwise his campaign has been floundering because he has not focused enough on:

• What the past PN government’s mistakes were and clearly changing them

• What policies a PN government would put in place to stop Malta heading to the wall and the Maltese from eating each other and rendering life on this island impossible.

In short, Labour having won the election by promising to pander to anybody’s desires, is still (daftly) repeating its campaign. PN, for all its rhetoric against Muscat, has yet to understand where the country is heading and offer a radical alternative. If it tries to compete with Muscat on Muscat’s own ground, it is doomed.

[email protected]