When the Labour Party is irresponsible in its claims, it doesn’t help its cause. Its various and variegated members and supporters take great offence when its leader’s hairpiece is mocked (oh dear, we’re so very serious; we’re not allowed to laugh), but then think nothing of having its spokesman make wild accusations about the way heart angiograms are taking place at the new hospital. If something is wrong, then yes, the Opposition has to speak out about it. But casting doubt and throwing mud around is just not an option when people’s concerns about their health hang in the balance.

Fortunately, the doctor performing the angiograms is not the sort to sit on the fence and keep his options open with both political parties (ghax ma’ tafx min se jkun fil-gvern [because you don’t know who will be in power]). I remember him throwing his weight behind the Yes campaign in the EU referendum. And now Albert Fenech, the hero of a couple of thousand little old ladies and gentlemen who think he is wonderful not just because of his medical abilities but because of his unparalleled bedside manner, has responded scathingly to Michael Farrugia, Labour’s health spokesman. “It would have been better for whoever made these allegations not to have undermined their natural intelligence and integrity by making cheap politically-based allegations based on misinformation,” he said. “I will not accept criticism of my work from people who have no understanding of the cardiac profession, and certainly not from politicians.” He then dismantled the allegations, one by one.

The thing the Labour Party doesn’t seem to understand is that it is a government-in-waiting and not a housewife waiting at the grocer and killing time by criticising the neighbours and spreading rumours. If the Labour Party’s shadow minister for health stands up in Parliament to criticise the way heart angiograms are taking place at the new hospital, we expect him to have spoken to specialists in the field, to have researched the subject thoroughly, and to be armed with facts and figures. We don’t expect him to stand up and make his accusations based on something that somebody has told him, and which he hasn’t checked out. The memory of Joe Sammut, Labour MP, accusing the Dutch government, in Parliament, of racism because somebody had told him at a reception that Maltese babies are separated in Dutch hospital nurseries from Dutch babies, prompting a dismayed response from the Dutch ambassador, still lingers miserably on.

When this kind of thing happens, it undermines even further our trust in the ability of these people to do anything properly. Among the many reasons why people like me won’t vote for the Labour Party, at least in its current incarnation, is our perception of it as a bunch of cobbling amateurs. That perception was confirmed by the disastrous period of government between 1996 and 1998, when everything seemed to go wrong and we got the sense that the country was being used as a guinea-pig for Alfred Sant’s lab experiments with government. Rabid Labour supporters, the kind who think that the sun rises and sets on the leader’s wig – most of them women who absolutely adore that man and think he can do and say no wrong, God knows why as he has zero sex appeal – tried to excuse him by saying he was on a learning curve. This amused me, as the very idea of a country being held hostage while the new government struggles to learn the ropes beggars belief. Newly-elected people are expected to hit the ground running. Alfred Sant’s groupies are still trying to excuse him now, saying that “he had no time to implement what he wanted to implement, miskin – ma’ kellux cans” (poor thing he didn’t stand a chance) (or ‘chance’, if the woman in question is one of those Sliema champagne socialists with a chip on her shoulder). I was reminded of this a couple of years ago, when a new impresario company organised a concert for a star of the opera world and, in the chaos that ensued, as thousands of people tried to enter Manoel Island all at once, announced over the sound system: “Please excuse us as we are on a learning curve.” To which the general reaction was, if you’re going to experiment, don’t start with an audience of thousands for an international star.

This is not a matter of liking or disliking the people the Labour Party is putting forward as prime minister and ministers. I think I speak for very many when I say that we just don’t feel confident in their ability to do much right, still less to do it with style and panache. There are several such people in the Nationalist Party frontline and even in the Cabinet, but the Nationalist Party has an inbuilt control system that ensures these fools can only mess up so much and no more. While we’d rather they weren’t there in the first place, at least we know that they’re kept locked in a box. Also, the Nationalist Party has earned our trust by consistently taking the right decisions on EU membership, education, and the direction of the economy. In these areas, Labour, and particularly its leader, has earned our mistrust. His decisions have always been the wrong ones – not just wrong, but embarrassingly so, and quite frankly, I can’t shake off the memory of him standing swaying on that truck when the referendum result was announced, his tie beneath his ear and his face ashen, insisting to a small crowd of bewildered people that his was the right decision all along. Not many people saw that on television, because most were charging about the streets waving flags and celebrating.

Fundamentally, I don’t see much change between the Labour Party which ran the country while I was growing up and the Labour Party that is putting itself forward now as the magic wand for Malta. The violence may have been removed and the rampant corruption may have been controlled, but most of the people are still the same, including Alfred Sant who was president of the Labour Party when Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici was its leader. That’s why I laugh when he talks about zero tolerance for corruption. It’s such a joke. Why wasn’t he speaking about zero tolerance for corruption in 1984? Was he too scared of his party bosses, or was he maintaining a public face of loyalty for them while all that disgusting stuff was going on? That would make him either a coward or a hypocrite. Either way, it leaves him without a spine.

There is this inherent lack of vision in the Labour Party that I just can’t get to grips with. It’s a clodhopping, earthbound, pedestrian view of life. We all laughed at the Nationalist Party for its determination to make us an EU member State (I was one of those who thought that it would be impossible) and for its dream of putting Malta at Europe’s cutting-edge in information technology (come on, Malta?) but now there we are. The politics of hope is wonderful, because it raises people’s aspirations and helps them do better. Mintoff and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici banged on about the working class but left the working class more or less where it was, dependent on handouts of money and plots of land. But it was over the last 20 years that the working class acquired the aspirations and even the trappings of the middle-classes: education, good jobs, nice clothes, cars and well-furnished homes. The expectations have gone way beyond a plot tal-gvern and the minimum wage. That’s the way it should be. Ambition is good. It gets people out of the rut of depending on others.

If I can’t stand the Labour Party, then it’s because I have spent the last 43 years listening to it preach the politics of depression. The song it sings today is still the same demoralising song it sang when I was six, 16, 26 and 36. It has been the refrain of my life: we can’t do it; we can’t make it; Malta is different; Malta is special and needs special treatment; forget it, it’s impossible; instead of educating people, let’s create more jobs for the uneducated, and so on and so forth. Sure, there are some capable youngish people in that party, the sort I could really get along with. But what exactly is the point of them if they are buried beneath that dead weight of dinosaurs from Dom and KMB’s day, the biggest dinosaur of all being the man who wants to become prime minister before he picks up his pension?

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We thought we had a problem with lack of reading and general knowledge, but we can always reassure ourselves that America is worse off. Just listen to this. Miami Dolphins linebacker Channing Crowder, due to play against the New York Giants at London’s Wembley Stadium a couple of weeks ago, admitted to Sky News that he didn’t know people speak English in London. Crowder, who is from Atlanta, Georgia, said he didn’t know where London is. “I couldn’t find London on a map if they didn’t have the names of the countries,” he said. “I know Italy looks like a boot. I learned that. I know London Fletcher. We did football camp together. So I know him. That’s the closest thing I know to London. He’s black, so I’m sure he’s not from London. I’m sure that’s a coincidental name.” Don’t laugh the next time somebody says on radio that Big Ben is in Birkirkara.