So now we know: Brincat threatened to resign and Muscat said, “No, wait…”

Leo Brincat told his interviewers this afternoon that he considered resigning in the thick of the Panama Papers scandal (presumably when Konrad Mizzi refused to do so himself).

So now we know how he came to be Malta’s nominee for the European Court of Auditors. There would have been a bit of a scene leading to a deal being struck: Brincat doesn’t resign and Muscat nominates him for the ECA.

But Brincat doesn’t say that – he says that he decided not to resign after all, “because you are a hero for a day and spend the rest of your life in the wilderness”.

The fall-out for Muscat, had Brincat resigned, would have been tremendous. It would have, for a start, made it impossible for him to keep Konrad Mizzi in the cabinet.