Jason for de chop (I don't think)

Joseph Muscat has been up to what he no doubt imagines are Macchiavellian tricks, though from where I’m sitting they’re more akin to Baldrick’s cunning plans in Blackadder.

A story has been leaked to The Sunday Times, transparently and obviously by his adjuncts with his permission, if not by Muscat himself, that if Jason Micallef doesn’t behave himself and obey Muscat’s instructions, he’s going to be sacked.

When the party boss gives permission to his court favourites to leak hierarchical gossip of this nature to a Sunday newspaper, the real story is not what is published but what is between the lines: that Joseph Muscat now has so little control of the situation that he has been reduced to using psychological warfare techniques and what’s more, in full view of the public. There can be only one reason why Joseph Muscat’s people picked up the telephone and gave The Sunday Times that story: they wanted Jason Micallef to wake up and read it on Sunday morning. They used The Sunday Times not to drape their dirty laundry before its readers, but to give Jason Micallef a message. Quite obviously, all other attempts at communicating that message to him via telephone, text and face-to-face verbal communication have failed, and this was the last resort.

That the Labour leader has had to resort to such desperate measures speaks volumes about the power struggles within the party. It also makes him come across as Mister Non-Confrontational Wishy-Washy, using a Sunday newspaper to ‘control’ a recalcitrant secretary-general because he is unable to do so in person.

It doesn’t help that the threat of sacking Micallef if he doesn’t obey is an empty one, and that Micallef is likely to respond to it with yet another metaphorical reverse salute. The party secretary-general can be removed only by those who elected him – the party delegates – and not by Muscat and James Piscopo, the man he brought in to do the job of a chief executive officer (as though a political party can be run like a corporation or a charity NGO).