Presopopeja

Now that the Clucking Chicken is no longer leader of the Labour Party, will he carry on writing his PReposterous weekly columns for The Times? And more to the point, will The Times carry on commissioning them, when he is just an ordinary backbencher? Their only value lay in their being the thoughts – for what they were worth – of the leader of the Opposition. If his pieces were wholly cold and uninteresting when written in that context, how much more dead and irrelevant are they going to be now?

He’s been at it for years and years with this particular obsession, which says a whole lot about him: starting each title with the letters PR. People speculate about what this could possibly signify – perhaps public relations or press release. I just ask, what for? It doesn’t achieve anything and it makes him look like a PRat.

It’s also asking for trouble. If you are one of the very many thousands who can’t stand him, you’ll look at his efforts at coming up with new and interesting titles beginning with PR and come up with several suggestions yourself, like PR**k and PRuzuntuz.

This nervous tic of his is just a metaphor for the way he does things in general. First he commits himself to titles beginning with PR, when he doesn’t have to do it and when it achieves exactly zilch. Then, as a hostage to fortune, he must spend the next few years trying to adjust his article to the title, instead of the other way round, which is the normal way in the normal world. It is just how he does policy – first he commits himself crazily and for no sensible purpose, then he tries to work it out with a bit of bazwar ‘l hawn and bazwar ‘l hemm.

I hope The Times takes this opportunity to ditch him without the fear of causing undue offence to a future prime minister. That way we’ll be spared of the nightmare of being reminded of his existence at least once a week.

Sant is lucky that Malta has had a Nationalist government for the past few years. If he ends up without a job, he can find another one because there are lots about, possibly even for failed political leaders. He can collect his ex-prime minister’s pension next February and keep working and earning all the same, which will leave him fairly comfortably off, especially as his only dependents appear to be a few chickens in his backyard (yes, really) . And he can use his Maltese passport to live and work anywhere he wants to in the European Union, including his beloved Paris. Life begins at 60, Big Bird – so seize the day and go. Please.