Looks like the Opposition is going to be split into three camps

I’ve long wondered why people would deliberately create problems for themselves. Delia is going to start off with the Opposition split into three camps: the Partit Demokratiku, a small rump of MPs who support him and led by Jean Pierre Debono and his wife Kristy, Clyde Puli and David Agius, and a larger faction of MPs who can’t stand him and who will have a lot of trouble being bossed about by somebody shady who has never been involved in politics and knows nothing about it.

And to make matters even worse, Delia himself will not even be a member of the Opposition. I don’t think many people understand that the Nationalist Party leader and the leader of the Opposition are two separate and distinct roles and that the Opposition leader does not have to be the party leader.

If Delia cannot work out how to get a seat in parliament, Simon Busuttil remains Opposition leader even when Delia becomes party leader. That is going to be an interesting situation. If Delia does not want Busuttil to remain Opposition leader while he works out how to get a seat in parliament, he has to write formally to the President and the Nationalist Party parliamentary group has got to agree on who will be Opposition leader instead – but it can’t be Delia until and if he gets his seat.

If the matter of the seat for Delia in the Nationalist Party parliamentary group is not resolved, and even if it is, then I think that Muscat will helpfully aid Delia to clear out the Nationalist Party of those who don’t like him and in so doing serve his own interests by having the electorate crush the Nationalists.

He will call another snap election, the MPs who cannot relate to Delia will not stand, the messy Nationalist Party will not be trusted by the electorate, and it will be hammered at the polls far more crushingly than the last two times – and this time, because of the previous disruption and the nature of its leadership, recovery in the short or medium term will be impossible.