People who do not vote (out of choice) don’t count. They have no opinion. Politically they are nobodies, and they choose to be that way.

[anthony – The government has no political mandate to introduce divorce legislation].

Please tell me you’re joking.

[anthony – I was under the impression that where legislation is concerned parliament is supreme].

You have a wrong impression. The people are supreme. Parliamentarians are representatives of the people. They usually take decisions for the people. But sometimes, they ask the people to decide through a referendum. They don’t do that just to waste millions of euro.

[anthony – This must have changed now. The country will from now on be run by consultative referenda].

Its up to MPs. Its their choice.

[anthony – While we are at it, I look forward to two further referenda in the very near future….The first should deal with the abolition of income tax and the second with free water, gas, electricity, petrol, diesel, kerosene and light fuel oil for all].

If they’re crazy, MPs will do just that. And if they do, they would have to act according to the result of the referendum. No one forces MPs to make a referendum.

“Nationalist voters have much higher standards and a much lower tolerance threshold” If they have a higher standard they would never ever vote Labour whatever happens in parliament about the divorce referendum.

[Daphne – Yes, Giovanni, they would do what they did in the last election and refuse to go out and vote no matter how many Sliema doors the prime minister knocked on even on polling day. It was ‘my kind of people’ who nearly lost the general election for the Nationalist Party the last time round – though I famously got terribly angry at them for doing so and had them baying at me. The odd thing is that their sons and daughters rushed out to vote PN. Now consider the position of somebody who held his nose and voted PN in 2008, has been getting progressively irritated over the last three years, voted Yes to divorce, and now has to contend with the sight of the PN behaving like this. How do you think that person is going to react in 2013? I’ll tell you this: I am Mrs Archetypal Socio-Economic Group AB 9th District Voter (even though I haven’t lived there since I was 26) which is how I know exactly how this huge sub-group of PN voters thinks. But I am definitely not typical in my determination to vote come what may, and in my view that if I am going to have a prime minister then I want to choose him. Nor am I typical among this group in my understanding that a vote for a Labour MEP candidate is a vote for Labour, and caring enough about it not to do it. ]

But as you say, Antoine, that conservative religious element is strong. You have the Catholic Church and all those strongly influenced by it.

I do not deny that the PN has a liberal leaning policy on many other matters.

It would actually be interesting to quantify the PN’s support into conservatives and liberals – but this is probably impossible.

Having said this, the only liberal party I know of that is viable in the sense of independently electable is the Democratic Party in the US. All other viable liberal parties I know of are either a combination of conservative and liberal ideologies or else they are not viable on their own.

“MPs should be allowed to express themselves freely on this issue.” Right. So why did we have a referendum? For fun? Because it’s more accurate than a Misco poll?

Not in the Madonna’s tears, I trust.

It must be pretty rusty and dusty after all these years.

How did the Nationalists vote on the decriminalisation of sodomy? No to anal sex? Shame they didn’t have billboards in those days. I can just see the slogan: TAL-IVA NIBGHATUHOM JIEHDUH F’S**MHOM.

It would not be a bad idea to copy it to the Archbishop, Auberge de Castille, Valletta.