The mentality of a somebody who leases his own family car to the government and carries on using it

What an attitude, honestly. There speaks the man who, when revolution erupted in Tunisia, could speak only of what he would have done in terms of advertising to attract tourists away from the trouble-torn beaches of that country.

He didn’t even have the insight or foresight to see the bigger picture, and how the revolution would spread, turn into full-blown war, and destabilise the entire region.

“If the EU pulls the plug on Greece, Malta won’t get its money back.”

Do we weep in despair or what? Had the EU pulled the plug on Greece, Greece would have been completely destabilised. Its problems in that situation would not be contained and internal but would spread to the whole of Europe. Greece has a population of more than 11 million.

If the country is left to cope with its own bankruptcy, those 11 million people will begin to move out in droves. Those who are left behind will need food aid and medical aid. Bankruptcy and its concomitant despair leave Greek society wide open and exposed to totalitarian politics.

‘Getting our money back’ will, in that scenario, be the least of our problems.

Muscat shows that he simply cannot grasp the communitarian mindset that underpins the European Union: that we are all in this together and that we pull together for the common good, because those who came before us have experienced the alternative and a reprise is too terrible to contemplate.

But what is most astonishing is his absolute lack of insight into any situation beyond partisan politics in Malta. We have to remember that this is the man who spent at least five years on the campaign trail trying to convince us that we should vote against joining the European Union because it would be the death of Malta, when any sensible person with a sound education and common sense could see that it would be Malta’s salvation – or more pertinently, the salvation of those of us who were born Maltese citizens.