Michelle Muscat, spouse of the Prime Minister, called an urgent press conference yesterday after the Times of Malta revealed in the morning that the prisoners who had been contracted to make curtains for her friend Mary Grace Pisani's soft furnishings business, and 400 costumes for the 'fabulous' performances put on for Third World dictators at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting last November, have still not been paid and that their requests for payment are being brushed off.

Mrs Muscat was very, very cross. She turned up wearing baby pink, accompanied by a highly aggressive-looking Mrs Pisani in sombre black, and two members of her Merry Gold Foundation who looked as though they would have been delighted to be shot and put out of their misery: Mrs George of the Bank of Valletta and Mr Grech of Winter Moods, whose sister is married to Norman Hamilton and living it up in London while the Maltese electorate pays.

The mask really came off. Gone were the simpering, the goo-goo eyes, the semi-permanent rictus and the baby-talk. Suddenly we had Michelle from the social housing project in Nigret, who'd tumbled through the rabbit-hole and into power, money, "the High Society" (to quote one of her ill-advised invitations) and business operators and sheikhs and assorted dictators' representatives who suck up because you are the means to their end. Her rasping voice, unfortunate poverty of words, and hostile body language combined with insults to and criticism of the media as she slumped behind her table and told journalists how to do their job. And as if that were not enough, she slammed her open palms down on the table-top repeatedly, clanging her rings, and waved her left hand about to make sure that everybody saw and filmed the ridiculous (at her age and in her position) Arabian wedding henna tattoo which she brought back as a souvenir of her holiday at one of the most expensive hotels in the cultural desert of Dubai.

You'd think that with everybody talking about their corruption scandals and the way the Prime Minister skipped off to Dubai for Easter without putting out the usual announcement of his destination through the Department of Information, only to have it revealed on my website that he and his family were staying at a hotel that is completely unaffordable on their income, Mrs Muscat would be more tactful about waving that idiotic henna decoration about. But no, she actually wanted to rub it in. She doesn't usually wave her hands about that much when she speaks, but yesterday she was Buddy the Little Helicopter.

You have to ask: who and what are these people? They are like deprived savages from the boondocks, who suddenly come into money and power; like Gaddafi brides who treat their servants like animals because they've never had servants before and they think that's how people with servants behave. I was horrified at her behaviour, mainly because I can't understand how the Muscats have gone from carefully curating their network of influence and looking after every last detail of how they come across, to literally not giving a damn because now they're on a power-and-money roll and have got to where they want to be.

So these are the new socialists: people who don't give a damn who and what they trample into the dust as they grasp and grab their way to the bank, staying at various chavtastic hotels en route. Mrs Muscat did not even have the sensitivity to understand how appallingly she came across, boasting about being on holiday (when by now the whole of Malta knows where she was staying) at a press conference about how vulnerable prison labourers were ripped off by her try-hard fancy friend who worked them like blazes and then didn't pay them.

As for the involvement of the Merry Gold Foundation, the Bank of Valletta must be mad. True, its chairman is a Labour-voting lackey who can't see straight, but the bank has a board of directors and they are wrong to allow the brand and the bank itself to be associated with something that exists purely as a publicity vehicle for the awful, money-hungry wife of the Prime Minister. Mrs Muscat bought sewing-machines for the prisoners using funds donated to the charity, so that her friend - who gives her dresses - would not have to pay for them herself even though they were going to be used by her business. And in return, the Merry Gold Foundation planned to take a cut of 10 per cent. Did I hear that correctly? Yes, I did. It looks like it's 10 per cent on everything with these people. They think it's normal. They think that's how the civilised world works. In 2018, we've got to send them back to the sticks. Really, that's where they belong and they shouldn't be allowed out to play with power.