MLP Leadership Contest - Social Democracy in the 21st Century

It’s been a very hectic week with evenings taken up running around London trying to fit in a million things. Most pressing has been trying to surmount the Curia’s paperwork in order to get things in place for our wedding in Malta in June. You’d never believe how difficult they’d make things for you.

Anyway, moving on. I was up at 6.15 this morning – yes on a Saturday – and headed off to Southend-on-Sea to spend a bit of time canvassing for Labour there with my old mate Kevin Bonavia. How far we’ve come from a small town on a little Mediterranean island. Kev’s going to be Labour’s parliamentary candidate down in Southend at the next general election here. Have the Maltese ever had an MP in the House of Commons? Don’t get too excited though. Southend’s a bit like Sliema. Full of old conservative types most of who would rather sell their daughters than vote Labour. Still, the election after that we might get somewhere!

The train out of Liverpool Street takes about an hour to get to Southend and I took the time to put down a few thoughts on Social Democracy in the 21st Century and how Labour in Malta has failed to redefine it to fit a modern context. This, I feel should be the basis for how we construct a vision for the future.

So, are you ready for a little sermon? There are two interlinked issues which are the greatest challenge for humanity in the next fifty years. These are globalisation and climate change. There is no hiding away from them and Malta is feeling the effects of these forces directly. From more extreme weather to migration and the creation of new jobs needing new skills all of these are directly affecting us in our daily lives.

Now, how are we dealing with these issues? Well, Malta’s entry in to the European Union has for the first time given us a real – albeit small – voice in the decision making process that will actually decide what the world will look like when I’m old and my marbles have long been lost. Having opposed EU entry, the MLP lost the opportunity to put forward a progressive vision of how we use our voice in Europe.

The PN has made a complete hash of the opportunity and has been bogged down with lost of strategically unimportant stuff. But, looking to the future, we need to grasp the fact that solving our local problems in Malta is now, more than ever, a question of solving global issues. Without understanding of the situations facing other countries, the problems that affect us directly are never going to go away.

The only way we can solve these problems is by reenergising the real message of social democracy which has always been about fairness, equal access to opportunity and a commitment to help the weakest in society. In a globalised society, we need to push this message in a global context. It is only by applying our principles in a global context that we can tackle the challenges of climate change as well as economic disparity which is driving so many people to move from their homelands.

Making this link between the global and the local, and presenting the EU as the forum where we can actually contribute to taking the right decisions must be the platform we need to adopt to take the MLP forward and to raise the level of politics in Malta from its current pitiful state. With this overarching view, we can develop a raft of practical policy ideas which effectively help people in Malta to move forward in their lives while at the same time understanding the broader underlying issues.