Glenn Bedingfield: in case you doubted it, all views are his own

This is Glenn Bedingfield’s Twitter profile. Bedingfield is a key aide to the Maltese prime minister. But he thinks that specifying how all the views he tweets are his own will clear him of any responsibility in terms of his official role.

That says a great deal about him and about the prime minister whose aide he is.

As the fuss about his anti-Islamic tweet should have taught him, the fact that all views are his own is just the problem here. He has just advertised the fact, on Twitter, that the Maltese prime minister has an aide who equates the Koran to Mein Kampf and Muslims in general to Adolf Hitler’s Nazis. Or else that he has an aide who is too thick and stupid to differentiate between ISIS and Islam.

Backwoodsmen like Glenn Bedingfield don’t understand – and are too arrogant to learn – that when you hold a certain kind of official position, there is no longer any such thing as ‘all views are my own’. They are the views of the holder of that official position.

And that’s why they have got to be careful: Bedingfield as to what he tweets, and Muscat as to who he chooses as an aide.