In tennis they don’t use the word zero when counting scores. They have a fancy name for it – they call it love. Some say that the name came from the tennis courts among the nobles in France when they used to call the zero “l’oeuf” (the egg) thanks to its ovoid shape. A tennis match kicks off at “love all” before moving on to other weird ways of adding up scores to find out the real winner. In any case for a tennis player love is nothing. Zero.
And Labour have got themselves a spanking new deputy leader just in time for the ball. We’ve already said much about how Labour have played to the PN’s tune when it comes to hyping the importance of deputy leaders and their “relevance” in politics and party programmes. We have also seen how Labour’s move is a clear demonstration that there was a moment of panic at the poll readings, that Anglu Farrugia was identified as the weakest link and that Simon Busuttil needed to be countered at all costs.
It is a battle of image and definitely not of substance. The supposed charm that oozes out of the newly anointed PN deputy leader was wreaking havoc with Labour’s plans. Somehow (and surprisingly) the PN bluff about having a “change card” in hand was working. So Labour needed to act fast. What better way then than to call the PN’s bluff? How? Short of cloning Simon they could only get as close fitting a substitute as possible. Enter Louis “Connery” Grech. Charm? Plenty. Affability? Truckloads. Substance? Come again?
For yes. We said it when Simon was anointed and we will repeat it with much greater force now that Labour got their clone. Where’s the substance? Show me the money. Grech shot out a speech about accountability, respect, managerial style and all that FEMA-speech yada we have long been hearing from Joseph. For a bit of added value he stole a few leaves from Franco Debono’s routine about meritocracy. Beyond that we just have image and the spiel about “experience gained in Europe” – Simon Said, Louis Did too.
So do we have anything new in our political constellation? Not really. We’ve got nothing. Love. The mad political extra-time before the end of the year has simply been an appendix of new-style valueless marketing. For now all we get are Simon and Louis… from Brussels, with love.
