Desmond Zammit Marmara, it is the fate of democrats like you and me to learn to live with the fact that we have resigned our fate to the determination of, as you call them, “brainless idiots”. I will also use your words to describe those of us who are not brainless idiots: “intellectuals”. You insist this is not an elitist choice of terminology, merely a description of someone who is not brainless.

If you can flatter yourself into thinking you have a brain, you will not begrudge me the same indulgence. But this is not going to be about me. It’s going to be about you. Since you’re not brainless, and you count yourself among the “Labour intellectuals”, try as I may not to giggle at the oxymoron, your Times of Malta article of this morning must submit itself to the rigour of peer examination. Unlike the brainless idiots, you, as a self-proclaimed intellectual, have the duty and responsibility to make sense.

Here is, if I may presume, a summary of your arguments in your article (linked here for anyone who will not take my word for it):

  1. You distance yourself from other Labour intellectuals which you sort in two categories, neither of which you belong to. The first category is made up of people who like you are disgusted by the Labour Party but unlike you prefer to shut up out of fear of causing the Party some risk of losing power. The second category is of people who whatever their intellect, partake in the slime and the mud that disgusts the rest of you, in other words either brainless idiots disguised as intellectuals or corrupt bastards with a university degree.
  2. There are more brainless idiots than intellectuals in the Labour Party so however noble the ideological ambitions of people like you are, the Party goes where the idiots want it to, nowhere near where you think it should be.
  3. For daring to speak out and criticise the Labour Party, you have faced retribution and intimidation fulfilling the prophecies of the cowards who shut up out of fear of the consequences of failing to suppress their disgust.
  4. You do not want to see the power of Labour diminished, you will vote for it in the next election, and you want everyone else to do so as well.

I’m sorry, but if you think there’s any logical rigour in that train of thought you belong to all the three categories you distance yourself from. Whatever your disgust at the Labour Party you are too scared to withdraw your support of it. However disappointed you are that there’s nothing labour about Labour, you still wave its flag and tell everyone to vote for it. However rare your intellect may be, and however more elevated it is above the noise of the brainless idiots, you join them wholeheartedly in the effort to preserve their power.

In doing so, in your own words, you continue to prop up “populist” policy making, “gimmicks” such as a €100 cheque to everyone in lieu of policies intended to narrow the wealth gap, and, most remarkably of all, “more corruption in public life and the name of our great country reviled both at home and abroad.”

You accuse brainless idiots, as you call them – someone called them Ġaħan – of acting mindlessly to perpetuate this mess. And yet, you do not have the wit to use your voting power, your alleged intellectual prowess, the powerful example of your past in the Labour Party and your contacts within it, your politics and beliefs, to bring about change.

You are disgusted by the plate put in front of you, vomit in it, but convince yourself very publicly that you have no choice but to eat it, vomit and all.

Let’s keep it simple then. You’re a brainless idiot.

You will be until you follow the logical conclusion from your premises. If the Labour Party disgusts you, betrays your beliefs, and is ruled by a majority you cannot turn around dragging you to places you don’t want to go, there are two choices left to you in a democracy: vote for another party or make your own. Now that’s intellectual.