The video, naively posted on YouTube, showing what Labour secretary general Jason Micallef had to tell a closed doors meeting for Labour supporters will not be airbrushed away, neither by raising any amount of stink on PN secretary general Joe Saliba nor by placatory interviews to non-party papers.

On the contrary, the speech as shown on YouTube brings into the open, and at the worst possible time, the dual levels of speech that one has long suspected was being used by the Labour leadership and here, wonder of wonders, was the best example: one message given at national level, full of reconciliatory statements, and another message given in a code that could only be understood by party supporters which was only rendered intelligible at such closed doors meetings.

Labour is posed to win the coming election: it’s only theirs to lose. And one very important issue on which Labour still needs to persuade the public at large will be the same issue that lies at the centre of its governing strategy: will it be a government for the whole country or will it be an orgy of Labour supporters claiming real or pretended redress for injustices suffered?

To bring it down to voter numbers, as has been said by this newspaper over and over again, it all depends on whether Labour wants to be elected by its core supporters, in which case it needs to placate and placate them and offer them redress galore, or whether, on the contrary, it realises that it can never be elected by the core Labour supporters alone and needs to win over to its side the unattached, the disenchanted, the fickle voters in the middle. There is no way such voters will be attracted to the party if they perceive the coming administration will be a government bent on redressing injustices, whether real or pretended.

By playing up to those with a grievance, Labour is taking a very dangerous and risky decision. It is not as if Malta is a one-party State with no means of redress: on the contrary there are the Courts of Law, there is the Ombudsman, there are countless commissions for the redress of injustices. True, all these can be made better, more efficient, more expedite, but it surely cannot be said the Law Courts are the bulwark behind which the government hides, for instance. So objectively there is no real need to promise redress. It is already there.

Besides, the Labour strategists must first ask themselves if, apart from the grumbling and recriminations of their core support group, there is any clear demand for a massive Operation Redress in the country, along with the risks this would entail. Consider: not even the French tried to do so after World War 2, and look what’s happening in Poland which tried Operation Grievance. Does this country need, nay deserve, such madness?

Thirdly, it all derives from the Labour template of government, to which many ex-ministers and would-be-ministers clearly hearken: the type of administration where the ministers ARE the administration, where everything and anything depends on the minister’s nod, or permit, or signature. This was Labour’s undoing in the 1980s and some people, it seems, never ever learn. For to promise to redress grievances, unless there are clearly defined and circumscribed (before the election, not after), how such grievances will be tackled, and why the existing structures are not felt to be enough, means politicians rewriting the rules, overturning the decisions, recreating unneeded promotions, bloating inefficiency levels, and so on. Do we really need all this?

It all brings to mind the promotions exercise that took place a few years ago, which, rightly or wrongly, brought about a spate of vicious recriminations, and which was only solved when the exercise was overturned and everyone, or almost everyone, was promoted.

This does not mean the current lot are unblemished, or paragons of virtue. Far from it. The past and present months are showing up repeated cases of inefficient management, delays, cost over-runs, unfulfilled promises, and so on. And it is also true that some, or many, of the appointees are not worthy of the posts they have been given on purely political merits.

But even so, assuming this is all true, what’s the benefit of replacing an inefficient administration with an equally inefficient one, except for Team B to have its time at the trough that Team A has enjoyed for so long? Sometimes, it almost seems as if this is the real name of the game.