Prime Minister Joseph Muscat must have been very irked by the well-measured and genuine reply to the budget given by Opposition Leader Simon Busuttil on Monday.

In his address on Tuesday, Joseph Muscat came across as an angry man. His aggressive attitude exposed a prime minister who found it hard to hit back at Simon Busuttil on a political level, and instead chose to try to belittle his opponent.

It was rather rich on the Prime Minister’s part to accuse Simon Busuttil of being personal. What was personal was the subtle attack on Simon Busuttil by the government-friendly l-orizzont on the Monday morning, when they used an article written by Dr Busuttil’s partner about traffic four years ago.

What Simon Busuttil said about parents, partners and friends being given cushy jobs paid by the taxpayer was not personal. It was fair comment on how the government promised meritocracy and instead was giving appointments to people simply because they were relatives, appeared on billboards or voted Labour.

There’s nothing personal in that. What is personal is for the PM to accuse Simon Busuttil of being illiterate on at least three occasions. Well, if Simon Busuttil is illiterate, how come the Opposition Leader was one of Dr Muscat’s examiners for the latter’s dissertation for MA in European Studies?

That Simon Busuttil had hit hard – politically – was also evident in other situations. On Monday, for example, the Opposition Leader criticised the budget for not making a mention of the middle-class, which had been a dear subject for Joseph Muscat in the run-up to the election in a bid to gain their votes. On Tuesday, Joseph Muscat made it a point to mention the middle-class at least five times in his speech, trying to recover the lost ground.

Mind you, Simon Busuttil’s speech was not faultless. He failed to dot the Is and cross the Ts in certain instances and seemed to hold back from dealing the killer blow. Maybe he is too polite but one cannot be so in Maltese politics. He needed to say, for example, that what is irritating is not the employment of former Super One employees in government ministries – after all, several journalists had left PN media to join the government payroll in the past – but the non-distinction between government and party that is so blatant.  He made the point that these people are still on Labour’s TV, but he did not specifically point out that this is unethical and unprecedented.

Simon Busuttil should have also been more critical of the government’s track record in education and its poor environmental credentials which will be made worse with the imminent separation of Mepa. It seemed that Simon Busuttil preferred to take political advantage and use his time when most of the Maltese were watching TV to slam the government on issues which were not linked directly with the budget. He also did not pace his speech well and ended up having to rush through his conclusion, which could have made a bigger impact if he had been more cautious with his time.

Conversely, Joseph Muscat had so little to say that he was often repetitive to stretch his speech and finished before his two hours were up.

And this is where his anger comes in, fuelled as it was by the constant heckling by the people sitting next to him and behind him.

Joseph Muscat is realising that he is on the same path as his predecessor at Castille.

On the macro level, Lawrence Gonzi led the country through the hardest economic times since World War Two with flying colours. Malta kept growing and flourishing when other countries were collapsing. But internal strife, scandals – the big ones, but also the smaller ones which were often blown out of proportion by the pro-Labour media – and loss of personal contact led to the Nationalist Party’s biggest ever political defeat.

Likewise, under Joseph Muscat the country is doing extremely well from an economic point of view. Nobody can deny the lower deficit and lower unemployment, lower energy rates and lower taxes, pro-business measures and growing investment. But the government is failing in other areas. And this is why Joseph Muscat reserved only a few seconds to speak about Malta’s largest problem – traffic, which will end up affecting our productivity – and barely touched on the more important subjects such as education, health, public transport and the environment.

The government is also failing to maintain its promises concerning meritocracy and transparency. It is being open-handed with its closest allies and friends, and the number of scandals that keep piling up day after day are eating away at its credibility.

It’s well and good that Joseph Muscat keeps referring to past issues such as the oil procurement scandal. But he must remember that now the boot is on the other foot.

He is the prime minister. An angry one, indeed. So angry that he did not face journalists after his budget speech.