This referendum was Muscat’s test as a statesman and he failed it

Every day I thank heavens that our political leaders are not military leaders and we do not live in the age of war, because if we did and they were, we would be in really serious trouble.

Muscat, especially, is so embroiled in playing out the petty chess-moves of a political tactician, trying to score points off this opposite number and make himself look good, that he loses sight of the big picture, which is the good of the country he is supposed to be running.

If he were a true statesman and strategist he would have summoned the Opposition leader, when the referendum was called, and agreed with him on a pan-party ‘cordon sanitaire’ which would end spring hunting and also neutralise their common enemy, the hunting lobby.

This would have taken the form of a joint announcement that they were both voting No, that the conservation imperatives are too great to ignore, and that they hope others would do likewise.

Instead the idiots – for no other name suffices right now – did the opposite, as a result of which they are both in the doghouse and their common enemy is still there looming large.

Can you imagine if Roosevelt and Churchill had not joined forces with Stalin to defeat Hitler and Mussolini, on the grounds that Stalin did not share their democratic values and was technically also the enemy anyway?

I think the trouble is that neither political party quite understands that the hunting lobby is their enemy. The Nationalist Party sees them as a group that can be courted and mollified, while the Labour Party actually thinks of them as friends. But any bunch of people who hold you at gunpoint to get what they want, and who force you to shape your behaviour and policies, even unconsciously, so as to keep them happy, is an enemy.

Men who shoot migrating birds are deleterious to the common good and a problem for both political parties, so good military strategy would dictate that instead of falling over each other to get them on side, which gives this common enemy constant leverage and increasing power, the Nationalist Party and the Labour Party should join forces to eliminate the problem once and for all. The problem to the country, that is, but also the problem to them both.

Could we see them doing this in parliament? No. But the referendum was the perfect – so perfect – vehicle. The government couldn’t even be blamed for calling the referendum itself.

All the party leaders had to do is agree between themselves to both announce that they were voting No as is their democratic right and in line with their environmental conscience, and let the people do the rest, the decision was out of their hands. But it had to come from the prime minister. This isn’t something that the Opposition leader could have taken to him, but the other way round.

Muscat had the chance to eliminate a problem for the country and a problem for the parties and he blew it because his main focus was on a personal victory for himself and his choices. And to a large extent, he blew that too.