Apart from all the other issues, such as the re-emergence of George Abela as a possible contender for the Labour Party leadership, Labour secretary-general Jason Micallef’s appearance on Xarabank on Friday also served to show a quite remarkably poor grasp of numbers regarding the election.

Asked by a member of the public what was the number of new voters in this election, Mr Micallef replied: “17,000” when the true number was double that – 34,000.

What Mr Micallef probably meant was the number by which this year’s registered voters exceeded those in 2003, but he must have discounted the number of voters who had died or moved away, and thus gave the wrong information regarding new voters.

In view of the widely held perception that Labour lost the election because new voters supported the PN, Mr Micallef’s slip of the tongue on Friday is doubly ironic in that he gave the impression that he, and perhaps his party leadership as well, were not so cognizant of the all-important youth vote.

This is also crucial in view of Mr Micallef’s role as a central figure in the Labour Party’s pending leadership stakes.