The crowd at Castille Square on Sunday loved it and lapped it up. But that was what it had come together for, after all, with flags and party emblems even though they were supposed to have been consigned to oblivion as from 2012 or 2013.

Such huge crowds do wonders to boost up party spirits, especially after the buffeting of the past weeks and months.

But the crowds, as we all know, do not, by themselves, win elections.

That requires very different set of skills, as Labour and Joseph Muscat well know, for they employed them, with huge profit, in the years before the last election.

That requires an analysis of what is happening in the country and proposals to tackle what is going wrong, and how to move on.

Instead, Dr Muscat spent his time on Castille Square on May Day promising what we can summarise as More of the Same in everything – more jobs, more tourists, more money, more health care etc.

This is of course all welcome but then anyone can promise this with just two seconds’ thought. A trajectory continuing the trend line along the path taken in these past years, whether before or after the election. It is, to use a phrase the prime minister loves to use, a ‘no brainer’.

One also accepts that at this point, midway through the legislature, the government side is mainly focused on continuing to implement the electoral manifesto.

But even now, one would expect some faultlines to have appeared, some problems that were unperceived and unthought of in 2012, some new problems for the country at large to have been perceived and discussed by the country at large. And one would also expect from the party that is in government to come up with proposals and solutions.

Proposals and solutions that, by definition, do not consist merely in the extrapolation of current trend lines upwards and onwards, as Dr Muscat seemed to be saying on Sunday.

Even if one were to abstract away from the current political crisis in the country (of which, more soon) there are problems and difficulties that have arisen in the recent years and which need addressing.

Recent demographic studies have shown, for instance, that despite the increase in people in the workforce, the number of persons living in poverty has increased, and that despite the reduction in fuel prices, people are still finding life heavy going for them.

What do Dr Muscat’s words on Sunday tell the people who are still out of a job, or those whose living standards are still at an unacceptable level?

The prime minister was speaking to the converted, the party’s core, which turned out with all the trappings of old Labour, rather than the Moviment. But Dr Muscat knows as well as any person living in Malta that there is great unease, not to say anger, among the Labour rank and file at what is going on at the party’s top levels. This does not necessarily mean that the grassroots are right in their anger, especially if they would want more and more jobs with the government.

But this is where, maybe, even the grassroots, let alone the rest of the electorate, would have wanted the prime minister to speak cogently and without rhetoric on the crisis caused by the revelations of the Panama Papers and say what he intended to do about it.

Instead, as we all know, the prime minister did nothing of the sort and led the crowd in a chant of Upwards and Onwards. That may have pleased the crowd but definitely did not please the country which wanted a better speech from its premier. To offer this kind of glitzy no substance future is nothing if not tawdry. The Maltese public, if not the crowd, deserves better.