Locked in the throes of its own colossal troubles, with the Prime Minister shrinking by the day and now not even bothering to shave before important meetings, with his chief of staff permanently out of action and no Plan B or even Plan Z, with scandal upon corruption scandal, gravy-trains of cronyism and matters in Panama completely unresolved and unresolvable, the government has chosen to pick a fight with the Archbishop. And I use the word ‘chosen’ intentionally, because this is clearly a planned and orchestrated battle, something which they sat down, discussed and decided upon as a tactic for whatever desperate strategy they have cobbled together in the ongoing mess.
The Archbishop can’t open his mouth or tweet about anything without the Prime Minister’s key communications aide – the one sitting down the corridor in his office – mocking, deriding and insulting him on his eponymous website, with photographs designed to ridicule him and calling him “Charles Jude” as though he’s the cat’s father. This is not ‘Glenn Bedingfield’ launching assaults on the Archbishop. Glenn Bedingfield is not ‘Glenn Bedingfield, the blogger’. He is not a blogger, but the Prime Minister’s communications aide, part of whose job in the Office of the Prime Minister is to write internet posts which communicate his boss’s messages, whether in favour of the government or against its real and perceived enemies, including private citizens. It is a tactic that has no place in the free world outside Donald Trump. It is straight out of Baku or Moscow. So please, would all my colleagues in the media and others elsewhere stop referring to Bedingfield as a blogger. He is the Prime Minister’s communications man. That is what he is, and that is why he has a desk in the Office of the Prime Minister and a salary off the payroll there.
As the Prime Minister’s communications aide, he takes instruction from the Prime Minister on what to write and what not to write, on what messages to get out and what to keep quiet about, on who to target and who to refrain from targeting. It follows that Bedingfield’s assaults on the Archbishop are directed by the Prime Minister, because if they were not, the Prime Minister would have stopped them. Bedingfield works directly for him, and no Prime Minister can afford to have one of his closest communications aides going berserk on those who hold Constitutional office (as does the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Malta) and lead religions. Would the Prime Minister direct his communications aide to launch a series of assaults on the Imam, leader of Muslims in Malta? And if his communications aide decided to use his own initiative and begin laying into the Imam, wouldn’t the Prime Minister stop him immediately? Well, exactly – of course he would. The Prime Minister doesn’t want to be seen to be laying into the Imam, but for some reason, he has decided that he now needs to lay into the Archbishop.
This might be part of his desire to be seen as liberal and progressive, because in these backwoods-dwellers’ book, to be liberal and progressive in the contemporary world is to be like an early-20th-century Bolshevik and intolerant of religion (unless it’s a minority religion which might get you some votes). Try telling them that liberal means exactly what it says on the tin: real liberals are not anti-religion. They are as I am, tolerant of and largely indifferent to religion and other people’s religious beliefs, but always on guard to ensure that other people’s religious beliefs are not foisted on those who don’t share them.
What you have in the Labour Party, as epitomised by that Bedingfield, is a strange kind of Bolshevik anti-clericalism that should have gone out with the ark, combined with a superstitious adherence to the outward form of religious practice and the veneration of icons. Bedingfield, for example, was prominent in the official church celebration of the Immaculate Conception in his home town, Bormla, last Thursday, and he made a fuss because the Archbishop didn’t join in (why should he have?). So to stick up for the Madonna and the celebration of her pregnancy, he mocked, insulted and derided the Archbishop. Does that make sense to you? But it makes perfect sense in the Maltese village mindset which people like Bedingfield inhabit: their religion is all about superstition, and the Archbishop is all about politics, the Labour Party and ancient political wars from the 1960s.
And I suspect that this is what it is really all about: the desire to resurrect that ancient battle involving two people who are dead, Dom Mintoff and Michael Gonzi. But it’s not going to happen, because the world has moved on and Malta with it. To become agitated about bishops and religion, you first need to be engaged with that religion and invested in it. Otherwise, there is none of the necessary emotion first required to make you angry, even if the anger is manufactured. The main problem that Muscat and Bedingfield have with the Archbishop is that they have recognised him as being smarter and sharper than they are, with the sense of wit and humour that they conspicuously lack and, most crucially of all, complete indifference to their barbs, insults and attempts at bullying him into shutting up. They insult him (the Prime Minister, like the coward he is, doing it by proxy) and he carries right on tweeting what he thinks, including what he thinks about their choices and policies. That’s why people like him. And that’s why Muscat and Bedingfield recognise him as dangerous to their intentions.
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