The day following Corbyn’s heavy defeat, a point of order was raised in the House of Commons. An MP argued that Corbyn could no longer hold the position of Leader of the Opposition.

But he also asserted that the Labour Party should no longer be deemed the official Opposition party because it could not reasonably be expected to assume office in the event of the resignation of Government.

He asked for the Speaker of the House to address these issues. John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons at the time, gave a ruling that is very relevant in the context of Malta’s own version of an almost identical situation.

Faced with a situation wherein the Leader of the Opposition had lost the support of his parliamentary group by a significant majority, Bercow’s response was: “I can confirm that the Labour party currently constitutes the official Opposition and that its leader is recognised by me, for statutory and parliamentary purposes, as the Leader of the Opposition”.

Bercow notably did not remove Corbyn nor did he make any attempt to identify a replacement.

He simply confirmed the Labour Party as the official Opposition, ignoring the dissent amongst its Parliamentary Group, and confirmed its party leader as the Leader of the Opposition.

This is the same position that was taken by the President of Malta.

Contextually, the situations are identical, with the one notable difference that the President sought and was able to identify an individual who has the majority support of the PN parliamentary group.

Bercow, on the other hand, did not believe that he had an obligation to do so. As a result of Bercow’s ruling, this position is now entrenched in Erskine May, the bible of parliamentary procedure for the UK House of Commons and the default source for the Maltese Parliament.

Should a point of order be raised on this matter in the Maltese Parliament, and should the Speaker decide to take this upon himself, he would ultimately refer to Erskine May, and in turn to Bercow’s decision.

The Maltese Constitution and parliamentary system are developed on the Westminster Model.

That said, the Maltese system does have differences to that of the UK, notably that Parliament is not supreme but is subject to the Constitution as suprema lex. Nonetheless, the parallels between the situation in Malta today and that which took place in the UK in 2016, are not only useful but necessary references.

Whilst the outcomes of the decisions of both the President in Malta, based on his interpretation of the Constitution, and of the Speaker of the House of Commons in the UK, based on the constitutional conventions, seem unjust and illogical; they are, it would appear, founded in the absurd rules of our legal framework.

Our Constitution, designed to spell things out as a matter of strict law rather than leave matters to residual discretion, at best, does not appear to provide the required clarity; at worst, it was designed to give the power of electing the Constitutional role of Leader of the Opposition not to our elected parliamentarians, but instead to the members of our political parties.

Making it even more absurd is that the process for appointing the Prime Minister is entirely clear, and rightly makes no reference to political parties, but only to receiving the support of the majority of members in the House.

Intuitively, you might have expected that there is a mechanism which allows the Constitutional Court to determine any ambiguity in our Constitution of this nature through an expedited process, instead of leaving its interpretation to the President and his legal advisors.

The Constitutional Court should have the competence to provide a ruling on sensitive institutional matters like this, within a number of days. Strangely, however, the Constitutional Court, as determined by Article 95 of the Constitution, does not have automatic jurisdiction to decide on a matter like this. Of course, politically, the matter is very different.

And the parallels that could be drawn between Corbyn and Delia, can be stretched even further.

Like Delia, Corbyn was also made to put his leadership of the Party to a second test; similarly, he retained the support of the party members. Like Delia, Corbyn stubbornly stayed on, only stepping down as Leader of the Party after it was subjected to a crushing defeat in 2019.

During that election, the Labour Party suffered its worst loss, in terms of the number and proportion of seats won, since 1935.

Luke Frendo, a Maltese lawyer with Frendo Advisory, has a background in international business management and identifying risks for financial institutions.