Mimicking the far right

“If mainstream politicians abdicate responsibility for addressing migration, which people on the ground talk about, it would give space for extremists to fill the void,” Muscat is reported to have said on Saturday.
I agree that politicians should not abdicate their responsibility. They are duty bound to offer a sense of leadership inspired by humanistic values.
To arrest the growth of the far right among working class people one has to address concrete issues like low wages, the race to the bottom in the labour market and the patronage networks which link politics and big business, and not imitate the far right by invoking the national interest in order to score cheap political points.
The constant pandering of the Labour Party to the national interest on an issue which revolves around 1000 human beings escaping from hell, is giving legitimacy to far right positions.
In the end of the day racists and xenophobes will simply prefer the original to the copy. And Labour will be pressed to become even more similar to the original...
Perhaps it is easier to exploit the worst instincts of Maltese society than to address concrete bread and butter issues which would put labour in a collision course with certain business interests.
The argument that to arrest the far right one has to appropriate their agenda was first proposed by Sarkozy in France. Despite a temporary set back the far right is even more stronger today reinvigorated by the legitimacy given to its argument by Sarkozy.