The more I read about the various contenders for the Labour crown, the more worried I get. This is not because I think that any one of them presents a real and viable threat to the Nationalist Party, but rather the opposite. I’m worried because they don’t. I’m worried because their quality is so poor that come 2013 we will be back where we have been for the last 40 years – allahares jitla l-Lejber.

The Labour Party thinks that the only reason “we” – we being the 140,000-odd people on the other side of the barbed wire – are giving them advice and offering our opinions is because we want to see them dig themselves deeper into the quagmire. They can’t seem to understand that apart from the Nationalist Party hardcore – they have a hardcore too, though it’s smaller than Labour’s hardcore because on the whole PN voters tend to be more intelligent – thousands of those who vote for the Nationalists would like to see a Labour Party they are comfortable with, one that they might even vote for.

Labour supporters are desperate to see “their” party in power, but here’s the thing. They are not terrified of a Nationalist government. They do not think that a Nationalist government is predictable in its unpredictability. They are not going to spend the next five years afraid to turn on the evening news in case they hear something wild and crazy. They know that a Nationalist government will not wake up one morning and do something like remove VAT and spend the next 10 months trying to invent a mad new tax to replace it with. They can grasp the fact that Lawrence Gonzi (and Eddie Fenech Adami) would never step up on a public podium and announce that the man he has named Oil Minister (in a country without an oil industry) will not be forced to find oil and obliged to resign if doesn’t. They can also understand, at some intuitive level, that there is something wrong with people who think and behave like this, but out of loyalty, they never give voice to their concerns.

Nationalist supporters, on the other hand, live in fear of a Labour government – not because it isn’t “their” government (Nationalist supporters, as I said, tend to be more intelligent and less tribal) but because of what that government means in terms of inept amateurishness.

Who are the named contenders for the Labour Party leadership so far? Here’s the shocking list of three: Joseph Muscat, who did nothing but smirk and tell us about the people who have a grazzja mieghu when interviewed by Lou Bondi, Michael Falzon, who comes across very well on a one-to-one basis but who performs like somebody ta’ wara l-muntanji in public and who was part of the catastrophic leadership in this last election, and Evarist Bartolo, a specialist in communications who had no idea how the Labour Party was coming across in the campaign and whose alter ego is very different to his public face.

Now here’s the even more disturbing list of those who are thinking about it: Anglu Farrugia – no need for me to go into any great detail there as I’ve done so several times already, and Toni Abela, who behaves on television like somebody auditioning for Moira Orfei’s circus. George Abela? They might have frightened him out of the race already.

The confused thinking over at Labour is quite beyond belief (or perhaps not). They’re telling us – “us” being those of us on the other side of the barbed wire, remember – that we don’t want that smug Cheshire Cat because he’s a threat to Gonzi. Yes, and I’m a threat to Carla Bruni. When we insist that the only possible choice is George Abela, because he is a real threat to Gonzi in that they are remarkably similar, they turn their argument on its head and say that we want Abela because he’ll split the party.

What? If there’s anyone who’s going to split the party it’s Joseph Muscat. I can already sniff out the fact that the party is splitting between those li ghandhom grazzja mieghu (as he puts it) and those who think that he’s tad-daqqiet ta’ harta, as I do. My visceral response to him has little or nothing to do with party politics. It’s at a human level, and so I have no doubt that lots of Labour people respond to him in the same way. Let me put it this way: if the daughter I don’t have came home and announced of somebody like Muscat that this was the man she planned to marry, I would be devastated with worry. There’s something there that I just can’t put my finger on, but I know it’s there all the same. Whether the party delegates can be bullied or persuaded into voting for somebody so very off-putting is another matter.

* * *

The first thing Labour has to ditch is its paranoia. Every time Labour exponents appear on television as guests on one show or another, they are hostile and bristling with antagonism. This was the case before the election, let alone afterwards. I’m not going to run through the list here. I’ll just mention the most recent incident that I watched on television: Frans Ghirxi, who edits L-orizzont, on Bondiplus last Monday. He was very pleased with himself because his newspaper has the largest circulation in Malta (other than its sister It-Torca, that is). That means nothing: it’s because Labour supporters are on average less comfortable reading English and less uncomfortable reading rabidly partisan “news” than better-educated Nationalist supporters, who are happier reading the English-language newspapers, which is also why sales of In-Nazzjon and Il-Mument are lower than those of the GWU newspapers.

Now Frans is a decent chap, so I can’t understand why he turns into an anger machine when he’s supposed to be having a civilised discussion in front of an audience of many thousands. He fails to give a good account of himself, which is a shame.

His opening gambit was an attack on his host for choosing to discuss the Labour leadership election rather than the prime minister’s choice of cabinet. Well, I’m doing the same here, and I’ll tell Frans why that is: it’s more interesting. For the last 18 years or so, I’ve worked on the basis that if I find something interesting, my readers do too. If I find it yawn-making, so will my readers.

I’m pretty average in that respect, not highbrow or different at all, and I use it to my readers’ advantage. A discussion about the prime minister’s choice of ministers leaves me wanting to reach for the remote control to see what’s exciting on the French Hunting and Fishing channel. This is largely because the discussion is about such dull characters, which is why they are safe. The discussion about the Labour leadership, on the other hand, is peopled by characters of assorted quirks and oddity, which is why they are widely regarded as unsafe.

At one point, Bondi quoted at Ghirxi something I had written: that Labour inevitably fails because it chooses “Labour leader” material rather than “prime minister” material – hence Mintoff, Mifsud Bonnici, Sant and now, Muscat. When Sant, for a very brief moment there in 1996, looked like prime minister material (through the rose-tinted spectacles of those drugged on the promise of VAT-removal), he won. When he ceased to look like prime minister material a few months later, people rushed to vote him out.

Bondi asked Ghirxi what he thought about this. Ghirxi’s response wasn’t like that of Jason Micallef when Bondi confronted him with something I’d written. He didn’t say that he can’t take me seriously because I’d had more bodywork than Cher, but it was in a similar vein. “Allahares il-Partit Laburista kellu jiehu bis-serjeta dak li tghid Daphne,” he said. I suppose it was on the tip of Bondi’s tongue to say that the Labour Party could do a whole lot worse than take my advice on how to win an election, but in the face of such tunnel-vision, you just have to give up.

I have no interest in ensuring that the Labour Party remains a mess, but rather the opposite. I can see clearly where they are going wrong, what they have to do to attract the votes of people who think like me (the maxim that you have to set a thief to catch a thief holds true in every sector), and I can’t resist pointing out what the solution is. But what does the losing Labour Party do? It listens only to those who already vote for it. Over the last 40 years, it has developed a bunker mentality and it seems that nothing is going to change that any time soon.