The recurring theme of the Labour Party general election campaign - other than the theme of how corrupt and incompetent the people were who took Malta into the European Union and the eurozone when Joseph Muscat expressly forbade it - was that they had a roadmap. In other words, they knew exactly what they had to do, and it had all been worked out.

What the Labour Party had was not so much a policy programme, we were given to believe, but a carefully crafted plan of action. Karmenu Vella, the man in charge of Labour's electoral programme (ah, that explains everything) took great care to tell us, several times, that his party's plans were "concrete and realistic" and that the money side had been calculated too. His exact words were "kollox costed". Konrad Mizzi then took up the electoral mantra, adding his own signature touch. The Labour Party's plans for the power supply, he told us on television, were "konkreti, realistic u doable". He also told us that he had decided to stand for election because he found Karmenu Vella inspirational.

One after another, Labour campaigners came forward to tell us that they are raring to go. "We will hit the ground running," they said. But as somebody remarked on the internet yesterday, it is not so much the ground they have hit running as a brick wall. I disagree. I think they hit the ground running all right, but in the race for the goodies, the grace and favour positions, the sinecures, the ambassadorships, the jobs for the boys and the special appointments, perks and trappings of cronyism. It is quite clear in retrospect that this is exactly the one carefully crafted plan they did indeed have: who would get what and when and how. Looking back, too, it is obvious that the gist of the Labour Party's accusations, criticism and some quite vicious targeting of individuals during its last five years in Opposition was not so much "That is wrong and we disapprove" but "Hey, I want a piece of that and how come you get to have it again when it's our turn to have some now." I can't help thinking, now, that their attitude towards and understanding of government was a turn at the wheel in which you got to have a good time, take things and exercise power and influence over others while the country ran itself as it did under the Nationalists.

Well, as things stand now, we have no choice but to conclude that the dog has eaten not just Konrad Mizzi's roadmap but the entire government's besides. With all those Taghna Lkoll snouts in the trough, it must have been fairly hungry. Karmenu Vella, who Konrad Mizzi found so inspirational, is ensconced in a soon-to-be EU Commissioner's role. He will leave it at the age of 70 with a pension large enough to enable him to live out the rest of his days in great comfort (which he would have been able to do anyway) - his reward for a less than salubrious political career as a minister in the cabinets of prime ministers Dom Mintoff, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and Alfred Sant and forming part their absolutely disastrous and shambolic governments (catastrophic, in the case of Mifsud Bonnici's).

Konrad Mizzi's €51,000-a-year consultant, Miriam Dalli - who is married to the son of his great inspiration - is now cosily also in Brussels, having been dispatched there by the electorate rather than by the government. And poor Konrad is left holding the... oh, never mind. Yet this is no laughing matter. The fact that the government's pre-election roadmap has turned out to be one built on wishes, promises, magical thinking and handshakes on deals that have since gone wrong, are being reneged on or never existed in the first place, is seriously problematic. Come what may, the government is going to reduce those tariffs, and to do so it will have to use its own money... or rather, your money. To charge you less for electricity, it will charge you a whole lot more for something else and cut down on expenditure in crucial areas, until the damage grows exponentially and we edge closer and closer to the brink.