Glenn Bedingfield cautions Labour Party against siege mentality in wake of June election result
Parliamentary Secretary Glenn Bedingfield says June election result came as a surprise but cautions against a siege mentality: 'Now is not the time to build walls; we have to open up.'
Glenn Bedingfield is calling for more openness in the Labour Party after the June European Parliament election result and cautions against a siege mentality.
In an interview with MaltaToday, the parliamentary secretary says the party needs to step up on auto criticism and serve as a prodding stick for government.
“Now is not the time to build walls,” he says, insisting the forum of ideas within the party needs to be widened.
“We have to open up; we have to speak; we have to reach more people because historically, the PL’s message was always a message that belonged to the people, to workers,” he says.
Addressing the criticism by some within the PL’s grassroots who often label non-traditional PL voters as opportunists, Bedingfield says he understands where they are coming from.
“Many of those who speak in this way do so because they would have passed through personal experiences. We have to address these personal experiences, but I speak a lot with these people and even they understand the need for the party to grow,” he says, adding that the PL was at its most successful whenever it acted as a movement.
The PL won a relative majority in the European Parliament election with a vote gap that was slashed to just 8,000 votes.
Bedingfield says the result came as a surprise to him but the message he draws from it is that the people do not trust the Nationalist Party and want a better PL.
Nonetheless, he acknowledges that the scenes of jubilation by Labour supporters outside the courthouse in Valletta when Joseph Muscat was arraigned did the party no good.
The government, he says, must act on quality of life issues, which he believes are bothering people – the environment, construction and traffic. Decisions must not be taken with the next general election in mind, he cautions, but should be based on a vision of where the party believes the country should be in 20 to 25 years’ time.
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