Suddenly, they all seem to know what was wrong

Lino Spiteri is not favourably impressed with the way that every Tom, Dickhead and Jerry-Jason in the Labour Party is coming out of the closet to say that they knew where the party was going wrong.

Here he is, in The Sunday Times last Sunday.

Various Labour personalities are showing unmistakably that they had long been aware where the party was going wrong. It was not appealing enough to the middle classes. Easy grinning was no substitute for the politics of penetration. The overall line was too aggressive, at times frightening. It misread the signals the electorate was transmitting. Assistance from those prepared to give a hand at personal sacrifice was scorned.

Even the repeated emphasis on zero tolerance to corruption is being questioned.

More than where will it end, one should ask why did it begin now. What was the level and state of internal strategic discussion within the Malta Labour Party? Were the faults so obvious in the aftermath of defeat pointed out before the votes were cast? Were they brushed aside? Or was there god-like reluctance to listen to and heed sound warnings from mere mortals? Or – more remarkably still – was there near-total silence, complete acquiescence to the line decided upon and shot by the few who held the sceptre of power in their hands?

No, they didn’t know what was going wrong at the time. They are speaking only now with the benefit of hindsight. Before 9 March they hadn’t a clue and were brimful of confidence in victory. Maria l-Maws, who is busy writing newspaper columns now in which he portrays himself as weighed down with introspective wisdom, was busy writing other newspaper columns then in which he explained to us in great detail why the Labour Party was going to win. I remember with particular pleasure one column in which he described how confident he was of victory because of all the people he was meeting on his house-calls in Sliema who told him they always voted PN but would be switching to Labour.

I wonder who Lino Spiteri was referring to when he wrote this.

Going by the revelations made so far, the MLP needs sound penetrating policies, not grins switched on and off as if in some starlet revue.

I can only imagine it was those two metrosexual JMs – Jason Micallef and Joseph Muscat, the twin stars of Labour’s starlet revue.