Houston, they have a problem

Toni Abela has told Malta Today, whose legal counsel he is, that he had an hour-long meeting with the Prime Minister and told him that he would not be pressing ahead with his nomination for the European Court of Auditors.

The fact that the meeting took an hour tells me that this was not the only matter discussed. They will, of course, have had to discuss the inevitable: his deputy leadership of the Labour Party. Abela did not mention this to Malta Today – or rather, he will have mentioned it but asked them not to report on it – which means that he probably intends not resigning the leadership unless he is somehow persuaded out of it.

This leaves Muscat with yet another problem of his own making: how to untangle the mess of a deputy leader-elect and a deputy leader who won’t resign.