The Labour Party has not emerged from the limbo it plunged in since 2014. And now the infighting within the party has turned fratricidal with the expulsion of Yatin Varma and four others.

There are two important things that should be remembered when looking at the malaise of the Labour Party. The first is that defeat followed by a wave of expulsions/resignations is a recurrent feature of Mauritian politics. All the mainstream parliamentary parties are sustained by a floating mass of politicians shuttling between one party to another depending on its perceived chances. Pick any party and it becomes obvious that the bulk of it, save for its leaders and some second-tier figures, more often than not actually came from another party.  This was true in the past and is equally true today. So an electoral defeat in 2019 followed by some heads rolling at the Labour Party is not particularly unusual.

What is more serious is when this is all a party preoccupies itself with. To compensate for this weakening, a party must offer voters something else. Simply putting forward a leader and expecting anti-incumbency to do the rest never works.  Let us take 2005 as an example. Labour won the election then not just because of anti-incumbency but because throughout its time in the opposition, it brought up restoring the pension on the universal basis, job losses in textiles and sugar and talked about democratising the economy. In other words, there was something more on offer to the voter than just the leader and empty boasting.

However, since 2014, the Labour Party has been stuck in a funk where all it talks about is its leader and an election is projected as a simple popularity contest between two leaders with little else on offer. In this, Labour is apeing the disastrous strategy of the MMM. For years, the MMM thought it could simply coast on anti-incumbency, crying scandal and offering little by way of ideology or promises and relying solely on the personal popularity of Paul Bérenger, who has spent all his time since 2014 putting out fires within his own party, while those leaving it lent their strength to the MSM.  The result? The MMM is now a party reduced to just Rose Hill and Beau Bassin.

This strange fixation afflicting Labour and the MMM has allowed the ruling MSM to simply and consistently keep outflanking them from the left on a number of issues (labour laws, minimum wage, pensions etc.), leaving these two constantly playing catch-up. A rather strange predicament for two parties that never tire of boasting of their working-class roots.

Defeat followed by a purge is nothing new or dramatic. What is, however, is the limbo that Labour seems not able to get out of. And it will not do that until it starts paying less attention to its internal byzantine politics and more to what will attract voters its way. For that, it needs to come up with some real ideas.