The Labour Party’s Christmas message to the people is that “Simon Busuttil and the Nationalist Party will end the year exactly as they started it – negatively.” I might add that the Labour Party is doing exactly the same, and will be starting the new year exactly it did the last and the one before that: like a stuck vinyl record or scratched CD. Doesn’t Labour have anything new to say – anything positive, for example? Instead it continues to drone on about negativity, and while that worked when it was in Opposition, while it worked even during its first 15 months or so in government, it now falls completely flat. It jars. It sounds out of kilter.

The Nationalist Party sounded negative before now because its criticism was not hitting home. People were first carried away on a wave of Malta Taghna Lkoll mass hysteria, and then in the wake of that they were still in a state of denial that it really was mass hysteria rather than conviction about a sensible choice, and so they had quite resistant defences up against any suggestion that things might not be going as swimmingly as they hoped they would.

Now, 21 months later, it is the cold, clear light of dawn and there is no going back for anybody, certainly not for Labour. While support for the government has been steadily eroded roughly since the summer – not necessarily because of anything the Opposition might have done or said, but because the government is going out of its way to let itself down – the truly decisive moment came with those gun-shots on the night of 19 November. That’s when public opinion really shifted, and make no mistake that it shifted permanently. Two things happened in the aftermath. Many of the people who had until then still been publicly defiant about their support for the government suddenly became embarrassed and pulled their heads in. And those who had been made to feel embarrassed for at least the last three years for supporting the Nationalist Party (or being vehemently anti-Labour) were suddenly vindicated in a way that they hadn’t been, in the general view, by any number of other scandalous situations or secretive deals or smell of corruption, all of which had seemed to go past without leaving their mark on a Teflon government.

Now those who didn’t vote for this government are quite happy to say so, even to boast about it, while many of those who I know voted for them, because they were ranting and raving about it all over Facebook and to anybody who would listen up to not that long ago, are in ‘x’gharukaza dan il-gvern’ mode. It would be uncharitable to remind them exactly where they stood last year. The only prominent switcher who is still boasting openly that he is ‘kburi li jimxi wara Joseph Muscat’ is Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, who made the most dreadful spectacle of himself on television last Friday, causing several people to notice, rather late in the day, that things might not be quite right there.

The shift in public opinion has also helped the Nationalist Party and its leader regain a considerable amount of self-confidence. Gone, and not before time, is the apologetic stance, the fear of overstepping the mark in its criticism, the reluctance to use the sort of harsh language and terminology that is required of the Opposition in circumstances as grave as those we are in. I have always been of the opinion that the only way to deal with the Labour Party, and with particularly with the cynical, sarcastic and arrogant Joseph Muscat, is to lay right in. People like that only know two ways of dealing with criticism. They will either try their damnedest to soft-soap real or potential sources of opposition by working out what their Achilles heel is and going for it. Or, if they recognise this to be useless – you cannot soft-soap or buy the Opposition leader, for example – they will railroad right over them if given half a chance or if the slightest sign of weakness is shown.

For quite a long time, Simon Busuttil had the same problem as Lawrence Gonzi: he didn’t know how to handle somebody like Joseph Muscat. Muscat would be his usual rude and sarcastic self and they would become all flustered instead of pinning him against the wall with a pointed response. Eddie Fenech Adami was good at handling him: when Muscat interviewed him on television as a Super One journalist, he would end up all red in the face, angry and het up while Fenech Adami gave him one sharp answer after another. Just one example – when Muscat and his energy minister brought out that Spanish bank letter without a signature, in parliament, and made out that this was some kind of wrong-doing by George Pullicino, the only proper response should have been: “You have a ruddy nerve waving that thing around, when you and your man there have been negotiating on secret details with dictators behind the people’s back, behind parliament’s back.”

 

Now Busuttil has shown signs of being to talk like that and people like it. Muscat is getting on their nerves and they have reached the point where they can’t stand seeing him any longer barging about doing as he pleases without any angry comeback from the Opposition that expresses their own feelings about the situation. The more Busuttil speaks to Muscat as he should be spoken to, the more encouraged people are, and because of that they’re getting behind Busuttil and his party at last. Ironically, it is the Labour Party’s constant negativity that is driving people away. It is beginning to acquire the public image of a malign force rather than a force for good.