Damn right. Joseph Muscat didn’t win the general election by pandering to hamalli and visiting the kazini.

He won it by measures like getting Promod/Miss Selfridge/George franchisee and lifelong Laburista Marlene Seychell to insinuate herself into social networks which were previously alien to her, throwing parties and inviting ‘tal-pepe’ socialites for days on her boat, where she would subtly introduce the subject of “Joseph”.

I know this for a fact, because suddenly Marlene Seychell was everywhere I looked in the run-up to the general election and all the ladies were going on about her boat and angling for invitations (jahasra).

But if you ask them where she came from, not one of them knows. I do – unbelievably common background, totally fake accent a la Ramona Frendo, completely invented persona, second wife of former Valletta FC footballer and Mintoff supporter Carlo Seychell, scammed him out of his clothes-shops business when she left him and used the money to reinvent herself as the sort of person who gives the impression she spent her growing-up years skiing in Gstaad.

I think she deserves an Oscar for that.

And Muscat put Marisa Micallef on the Labour Party payroll to do the same thing with the networks she had already, but minus the parties and the boat, of course.

She’d do things like ring artists and ask whether she could bring “Joseph” around to their studio to look at their etchings. And of course they would be wonderfully flattered.

Iktar politici bhalu? Nispera li qed tkun sarkastiku. Kif tista’ trid is-serjeta’ f’pajjizek u fl-istess hin tawgura aktar politici b’livell ta edukazzjoni taht in-normal?

Malta has changed. The world is changing. The electorate is no longer made up of a mass of blue boiler suits and a few white collars.

If Parnis and Nationalist MPs wish to be “qrib il-poplu” they could visit, for instance, the myriad software and IT firms.

They’re on an unwavering high.