Joseph Muscat: a leader as small-minded as his followers

Let Vince Micallef through! He's a lawyer, you know.

The foreign minister has described as “immature” the only statement that the leader of the Opposition has made about the crisis in Egypt and Tunisia, which is that Malta should “unleash a massive marketing campaign” to get their tourism business.

The foreign miinister is too kind.

That statement goes beyond mere immaturity and reflects the hamster’s cage mentality of so many Maltese. But you would expect a leader to lead, and not to be one of the hamsters who can’t see beyond the treadmill.

I don’t suppose you need telling, but I do know that the Poison Dwarf who takes care of the Labour leader’s communications reads this blog – because every time I refer to him in this manner I find a couple of obscenities in the comments box – so I will explain why that ‘marketing campaign’ statement was so ill-advised.

1. It makes Joseph Muscat look small-minded.
2. It is disturbing evidence that he has no concept of the magnitude of what is actually happening.
3. His first statement should have been about the crisis, and not about how we can profit from the crisis.
4. Despite doing the Alfred Sant thing and telling us that he is an economist when he isn’t, he clearly has not understood that the first thing a revolution in Egypt is going to do is have a nuge impact on the price of oil.

Worse still, when somebody devised a mock marketing campaign that fully illustrated just how damned stupid and shallow the Labour leader’s remarks were, the Poison Dwarf’s considered reaction – when the Labour Party was asked to comment – was that they had a good laugh and found the ‘savior faire’ (spelled badly, of course) amusing.

They seem incapable of understanding just how serious this crisis is, and just how stupid and crass Muscat sounded when he said what he did.

A bit of fence-mending (ask Ronnie Pellegrini) would have been in order here, but no. This is the Labour Party we’re talking about, with its grand history of never apologising and never explaining.

And bang on cue, The Financial Times reports this morning that oil prices have broken through the $100-a-barrel level for the first time in two years. The Suez Canal and a pipeline linking the Red Sea with the Mediterranean have continued to operate so far, but the Egyptian economy has ground to a halt.

Unfortunately for Malta, Joseph Muscat will be made prime minister by people who think as he does: small island types unable to put anything into context, with little insight or self-awareness, who think yet that they are terribly impressive.

One mustn’t despair, though. This country has survived much worse at the hands of its own people. It will do so again.