I think it is perfectly acceptable for the Nationalist Opposition to go into what the Labour government calls a ‘negative attitude’ and what has been called, and indeed is, a Tea Party replica.

This is the only way for PN to stand up and be counted rather than offering the government a walkover.

It may have nine MPs less, it may have got 37,000 votes less last March but there’s no time like the present for it to get some backbone back.

After all, this is what Labour spent the past five years doing, undermining the government, siding with all rebels, sowing suspicions all around, being bloody-minded about practically anything, opposing Europe, opposing the euro, making agreements while still in Opposition. If it’s wrong now, it was wrong then. If it was OK then, it’s OK now.

This is the Tea Party approach, even though it almost brought America to the brink. There was iron in Sarah Palin’s early challenge to Obama’s huge election victory in the first term. Without that challenge, Obama would have ridden roughshod over the country.

The Nationalists then have a completely unexpected gift in the person of Manwel Mallia, their biggest asset today. It is not just the minister’s bulk, or the way he rises to any provocation and the way he can be counted on to bluster, but also his multiple mistakes in policy-drafting and his worse mistakes in choosing collaborators, almost invariably going for the less qualified and the most subservient among possible choices. The Tea Party never had this boon.

The Nationalist MPs rose to the challenge in this week’s parliamentary debate on passports and citizenship. They were also quick to notice the possibility of putting a spoke or two in the wheels, though quorum calls, in which Labour were past masters in the past legislature and the one before it. All this is good fun and games in any political scenario, the warp and woof of dialectical politics.

But the PN, when the games are over, must also do some thinking and ponder on the essence of politics. PN’s reaction to Monday’s Budget Speech, like very Tea Party, verged on the hysterical. If they do polls, they will have realised the country did not follow them in their opposition. If they did not understand this, they haven’t understood anything.

One huge segment of the Maltese population does not live off online gaming, or financial services. Their salaries have been purposely kept lower and lower (a European record, along with Germany). They may have benefited from free plots of land where they built their homes, they may still go out and eat at weekends, but in recent years they have seen their buying power decreasing year after year, as things get dearer and not cheaper and as their purchasing power decreased with higher charges for anything and everything.

The Gonzi administration did not come forward to address these worried families. Its palliatives were skin deep, and where it offered a break, so many things happened that put this break into oblivion.

On the other side, Joe Muscat was promising them something concrete: a reduction in the costs for water and electricity. There were many questions raised about this plan, and still are, but the wide chunk of the electorate plumbed for getting cheaper bills.

That is where they were last March and there is nothing I can see about their moving anywhere else. If the electorate is bothered about the citizenship issue, I cannot see it around me. On the contrary, I can see them worried about their family accounts.

Our electorate is no different from electorates elsewhere. Look around you, what matters is related to jobs, living conditions and quality of life rather than issues which may be important in themselves but which hardly impinge on the lives of citizens.

Nor does this issue relate to the hard issues which indeed motivate people to go beyond bread and butter issues – such as race, etc.

When all is said and done, what matters is whether the economy is as bright as the government makes it, or whether it is still ailing as the Commission said the day after the Budget. We will get to know better this week.