From the No Side - A Year Later

The Malta Independent on Sunday 

What has happened to the substantial minority that had voted against joining the EU this 1^st May? Have they changed their mind or have they simply accepted EU membership as an irreversible reality?

As someone who had argued with conviction that there was a better choice to EU membership I can well explain where I stand now and where I stood before the referendum.

I believed then and still believe now that given our particular characteristics, EU membership has substantial disadvantages through disproportionate costs of bureaucracy to comply with the rigour of the acquis communitaire. I still think that it would have been more smart for us to negotiate on a bilateral basis something which was more tailor-made to our requirements rather than enter into a structure which is certainly unsuitable for countries of our size.

So as a matter of principle my views have not changed. I am however one year older and one year wiser and certain doubts which I used to have about the feasibility of the alternative solution have intensified.

I personally never argued the case for or against EU membership in black or white terms. I have never argued or even hinted that if the majority decision would be to choose the membership route then that would be a straight ticket to hell. I always kept my distance from the unofficial but well cycled clichés of senior MLP exponents who argued against EU membership in terms of ‘allaharesqatt’ (God forbid).

My line has been consistent. There is a better alternative outside membership that suits our characteristics of size and flexibility much better, but that in the end we can survive both in and out as both policies offer opportunities and threats. The real difference is ourselves, our determination and our readiness to do what we have to do with discipline and consistency and to stop the practice of throwing all caution to the wind for cheap propaganda gains to extend, seemingly perpetuate, political hold on power at grave economic costs.

Let me explain this in cola and lemonade terms. Let’s say membership is cola and non-membership is lemonade. I used to argue that lemonade is better than cola but I never argued that cola is cyanogenic and kills instantly.

I am one year wiser because the trust I had that in the No side of the fence there was the stronger sort leadership that is necessary, in the absence of the EU membership discipline, to make a success of it, has gone. It has evaporated when I saw those who used to argue that cola kills instantly, re-positioning themselves unashamedly and argue that cola, while not being the elixir of eternal life that the Yes campaign often tried to depict, is quite ok provided you drink it from lemonade bottles.

Even the best marketing guru would have problems selling cola from lemonade bottles. The perception is just not right and in business as in politics perception is reality. So when I see much lesser mortals seeking to perpetuate their stay in power by adopting a complete reversal of their formal policies, then the doubts I had on the availability of the leadership qualities to make a success of the No policy grow to the point of conviction that for all its theoretical merits it lacked practical application.

And quite frankly I think that the narrow margin that gave a majority to the Yes side had exactly this on their mind. They were and still are not enthusiastic about membership. They know that membership is no magic solution for our economic ills. But they believed that on the No, as much as on the Yes side, there was no quality leadership to impose the sort of discipline to stop this country from destroying itself and they preferred the external discipline of EU membership and eventually the much tighter discipline of Euro membership in order to save us from ourselves.

For me the issue is closed. No matter how much I still believe that with the right sort of leadership we could have cut a much better deal with the EU outside membership, we have to operate within the boundaries of available or accessible resources. Our leadership qualities could only get us an off the shelf package warped and twisted to be made to fit us for a transitory period until we deform our characteristic to fit the off-shelf shape of the acquired structure.

Now that we know that membership does not kill we have to give it whatever it takes to ensure that we make the most of it. And the advantages of membership is the discipline it should enforce on our leaders to perform the economic re-structuring without further delay. Without such re-structuring we cannot make the most of membership.

Membership success has to be measured in terms of the flow of foreign direct investment we are able to generate because we can be perceived as members of an organisation with clear rules and guarantees that go with the single market and eventually the single currency. Without such investment flows we will wither away as membership on its own is no guarantee of prosperity. Real and productive investment is! We therefore need to waste less energy and resources protecting unproductive jobs and we need to apply all our resources and energy in creating new productive ones. Re-structuring is not about avoiding closures and redundancies. It is about ensuring that there get created far more job opportunities than the unavoidable job losses.

And for those who still believe that membership is poison leading to instant death let me just say how much I admire their consistency. Let me assure them that there is ample space in a democracy for them to continue seeking to persuade the majority of their views that the membership deal needs total re-negotiation. But let’s all understand that the priority is now investment attraction and job creation and that this is best achieved through a common effort to re-structure and not by obstinate resistance to change. And if there a case to be made about the constitutional validity of the referendum then the place to argue this is in the Constitutional court and ideally it should have been done before the referendum, though there is no legal bar for a post-event contestation.

The real challenges are just about to start. Whether they enrich or impoverish us depends entirely on us.