NEWS | Wednesday, 29 October 2008

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Out of the wine cellar and into Brussels

Matthew Vella
The Labour journalist turned restaurateur has made it to Brussels. But Glenn Bedingfield’s friendship with Joseph Muscat has done the Labour leader no favours.
Bedingfield’s victory at the bye-election for Muscat’s seat in the European Parliament may have been a foregone conclusion to many, but the candidature of Wenzu Mintoff and Robert Micallef speaks volumes about how they viewed the proximity of Muscat to his successor MEP.
With the highest number of first-preference votes in 2004 after Labour elected its three MEPs, Bedingfield’s road to Brussels was always going to be a piece of cake.
And with eights months to go to the next elections, the European Parliament will pay Bedingfield something like €70,000 for his services, which means his electoral war chest is secure for 2009.
But Mintoff’s and Micallef’s decision to contest the bye-election also sent a message to Muscat.
Party insiders told MaltaToday that Joseph Muscat acted “rashly” in taking up Bedingfield, 31, on “familiarisation visits” to the Brussels parliament, twice before the casual election.
Muscat toured the parliament with Bedingfield as his most likely successor, and the leader’s imprudence had an even more bitter aftertaste when he was seen on a Net TV news bulletin in September emerging from Malta International Airport’s arrivals with Bedingfield by his side.
“His proximity to Bedingfield, even before the casual election itself, on a tour of the European Parliament, was incorrect and sends the wrong message,” party insiders said.
Now, Bedingfield will be taking over Muscat’s staff in Brussels.
A prosy point, surely: Bedingfield, as expected, obtained 62% of Muscat’s first-count votes in the bye-election.
But Muscat’s chumminess (both were each other’s best man at their respective weddings) ahead of the bye-election didn’t seem to go down well with either Wenzu Mintoff or Robert Micallef. When Bedingfield got to see the stationery cabinet inside Muscat’s office in Brussels, it was as though Muscat had forgotten all about Mintoff and Micallef, who for democracy’s sake were still potential runners for the bye-election.
For Mintoff and Micallef, contesting the bye-election, apart from putting democracy at work, was a sign to Muscat that they were ‘still there’.

Crossed lines
The Labour stew gets even richer. In the convoluted network of party allegiances, Glenn Bedingfield straddles Labour’s biggest, and most pressing, divides.
Apart from his friendship with Muscat, Bedingfield was also behind Jason Micallef’s bid to stay on as secretary-general when Muscat predicted “a political earthquake” inside his party: so far resulting in a mere rumble on the Richter scale.
Bedingfield joined none other than Muscat’s very own personal assistant, David Borg, in Micallef’s campaign to survive the oncoming earthquake, while Joseph Muscat’s own supporters, like former party president Mario Vella and veteran MP Leo Brincat, worked to oust Micallef.
Muscat’s response to Micallef’s re-election was to appoint his own eminence grise, the relatively unknown James Piscopo, to take over the party’s day-to-day management and undercut Micallef. Bickering between the two men has now reached “epic proportions”, insiders say.
The crossed lines in direction from Muscat evidently embitter loyalists on the outside: why someone like Bedingfield should have been given the royal treatment so early on, is beyond them.

Socialism, rosé and sparkling
The proof of the pudding of course is in the eating, and wine connoisseur Bedingfield has certainly had his share. Who would have known that beneath his robust newshound’s exterior was a man in love with the grape?
What political nous the former journalist has will be put to the test in Brussels, where he said he wants to look at the impact of illegal immigration to Malta, and the right to free healthcare. But it’s not hard to see what sort of watered-down brand of socialism Bedingfield adheres to. There are hardly any ruby-reds left inside Labour anyway.
With little time for any significant political impact, Bedingfield is more likely to have the party machine backing him in 2009 to top up another five years inside the European Parliament. It sure pays to be best man.

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