The reason, I suggest, is the very same opportunism that has since time immemorial typified all politicians worldwide, without exception.

I suggest their reasoning would have gone something like this.

We sat there picking our nose through this saga, waiting for Labour to dig deep enough, but these Nationalist busybodies took their backside off their parliament seat and are now once again getting close to the (hu)man in the street as they did in the 1980s.

So, we must act now, but if we stick up for Labour, we’d be banking on a lost cause; if we stick up for the Nationalists, they’d run away with the loot when the fight is over.

So we’ll sit on the fence, attack Labour for all the nasty corruption it brought about… and attack the Nationalists or all their nasty arrogance. (Surely, it must be still fresh in many people’s collective memory.)

That way, provided we’re diligent and accurate sharpshooters (which we’re nowhere near being, but let’s not be too demanding now), we’ll manage to pick out and claim a few votes as our own… and hurray for all that.

That much is obvious. But still, I wonder if the relevant papers re their party financing is in order

As if – they just hate the Nationalists.

It’s too easy with this lot.

Then I thought that this really is the issue, isn’t it? Because this myth was amplified and used relentlessly by Joseph Muscat among a certain section of the intellectually-inclined demographic. The Nationalists are not The Left, and in fact they are Anti-Left. WE are the Left. We have always been. Come to us, dear Left Wing intellectuals. Come build the Left Wing dream.

It worked.

But it’s bollocks.

Labour is no more Left Wing than Tony Blair. That is to say, the real Left Wing policies have always been enacted by the Nationalist Party. Labour just loves control and social engineering. But if Left Wing means the improvement of the common lot, then surely the most Left Wing of them all is the Nationalist Party.

This is not just semantics. It is AD’s multitool argument, the one it pulls out each time it finds itself in a sticky ideological situation. Like that time when Michael Briguglio had to justify voting, when he was party chairman, not for his own party, but for Alfred Sant’s. Because Alfred Sant is Il-Veru Xellug, and one is tax-Xellug before one is a sensible human being. Or a “proud dad”, for that matter (imagine voting for the man who wanted to prevent your children from joining the community of European nations).

There are few things worse than an intellectual. A sociologist is one. Which brings me to that other piece of work, Andrew Azzopardi…