Daphne, Joseph Muscat could take Malta out of the EU but retain Schengen status. The new passport holders will be satisfied, and his lifelong Mintoffian dream will be realised.

Absolutely everything our government has done since March 2013 has been anti-EU. Eventually, EU sentiment will turn against Malta to the point where Muscat will pretend to sulk, and then withdraw Malta’s membership because of the “national interest”.

The only way to prevent this is to elect Simon Busuttil as PM in 2018. Every damned election since 1998 has been a referendum on EU membership. Our pundits may think otherwise, but they’re all fools.

Daphne, you asked what the consequence would be if the passports sold eventually became Maltese passports, the answer is quite straight forward, nothing.

The premiss is simple: on paper these people are buying Maltese citizenship which entails them also to EU citizenship.

If Malta leaves the EU, what are these people going to do, sue the government? They can’t, as they bought Maltese citizenship. It’s not the government’s problem that the situation changed.

In a simpler analogy, somebody buys a villa in Madliena to enjoy living in the countryside, but over the years the place gets over developed to the point where that villa is surrounded by flats and maisonettes.

The property value drops, and the main original aim for buying the place (the countryside) is no longer there. You can’t exactly sue the vendor or the government.

This is exactly Joey’s scheme. It’s a scam, just like the rest of his so called “moviment”.

The consequences would be many, not only for those 1,800 applicants and their families, but mostly for the future of the real Maltese citizens.

But we are looking at a five-year time-span at least here. This is just the beginning of the anti-EU campaign. Besides we haven’t seen the actual contract, have we? For all we know there’s some kind of escape clause just in case that happens.

But even if there isn’t, do you think he’d care as long as he gets his vindication? It’s not like Labour hasn’t got a history of doing this kind of thing.

Basta ‘Gvern li jisma’.’

Yes, the whole Labour package is an embarrassment to Malta, including the physical appearance of ‘our’ representatives.

Will you organize it?

It was so obvious at the outset that such a hare-brained scheme would hurt Malta’s image in the EU that it was almost impossible for me to believe that they did not see it coming, even following the initial stream of negative press coverage.

Which is why I don’t believe it.

Joseph Muscat is an amoral lowlife, but he’s not stupid and he’s a schemer. There is no way in hell that he didn’t anticipate the backlash against the scheme. Is it possible that some European socialist buddy never cornered Cuschieri at some elevator to give him a piece of his mind about the matter?

I think that this scheme is nothing but a conscious attack on EU solidarity and values. This, with the bluster and bravado in the irregular migration coffee-smelling episode, was carefully calculated to distance Malta from the rest of the EU.

We should expect more episodes such as this from the government until Malta is so reviled in Brussels that Muscat will be able to legitimately say that we are better off breaking ties with the EU. At the same time the anti-EU rhetoric will be progressively turned up until most people will not want to stay anyway.

Does anybody put it past him? Does anybody believe that the bitter pill he had to swallow with EU membership isn’t still stuck in his gullet? He would see taking Malta out of the EU as his greatest triumph – the ultimate two finger salute to all those who dared to defy him. The mother of all “hu go fik” moments.

[Daphne – The only problem with this scenario is the original premiss: that Malta is selling EU passports to bring about this scenario. Unless the sale of passports is a very real scam (that is, one in which the buyers are intentionally being scammed), that doesn’t make sense. Otherwise, what you are going to have is 1,800 applicants plus their families who will have bought EU passports only to discover that they are nothing but Maltese passports. What are the consequences then?]

Farrugia and Bedingfield are physical confirmation that Labour isn’t fit for purpose and Muscat doesn’t know what he’s doing.