One would have thought, last week, that summer was over. One would also have thought the political season had restarted after the hiatus of summer.

None were to prove true. After a couple of days of cloud and a rainstorm yesterday night, the skies returned as blue as ever. And the heat was, if anything, worse.

Any thought, last week, that the Leader of the Opposition had kickstarted the political season with an interview proved to be an illusion as well, as Dr Muscat left on a cruise soon after. Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi has been uncharacteristically silent and absent ever since he returned from his holiday, which was interrupted by Guido de Marco’s death.

Soon enough, however, for all this brief respite, the clouds will return. And it is even more certain that, soon enough, politics will return to occupy centre stage in the country. As the Nationalist Party swings into Independence Day celebrations, as Parliament returns and as normal life resumes, the political arguments will once again dominate the scene.

In truth, politics has not really stopped for summer.

Just before the break, we had the two big issues of divorce and the BWSC contract, which are still like open sores in the national body politic. Then we had all the goings-on in the mainly PN-led local councils with so many mayors forced to resign. For those still interested in politics in the hot, humid days of August, that was entertainment enough.

At this point, each political party, but more so the party in government, is reaching its G-point, the point at which a pilot must decide whether to continue with take-off or abort it. In simpler terms, this is the point at which a political party must decide if it stands a chance with its current leadership or else look around.

We do not have, in Malta, the British tradition of a group of party elders who go to the leader and, as in Margaret Thatcher’s case, tell her she must go for the party’s sake. Now that’s a real pity.

At the time of the European Parliament elections, when the party in government was well and truly drubbed, it was suggested on this paper’s pages, that it could be useful for the PN leaders to meet the disgruntled sections and go forward to dialogue with no preconditions laid and no forced conclusions.

That did not happen. The government sailed on and continued to collect brickbats of all sorts, with the BWSC contract being the grandaddy of them all.

The result is that many in the country, and also in the ruling party, today believe it cannot win the next election. Some rebut that so was said before the 2008 election and yet, through sheer hard work (that’s their reading) by Lawrence Gonzi, it won. But others, and they’re in a vast majority, point out that Labour has a new and youthful leader, that politics in Malta have, for a very long time, been cyclic in nature, that the governing party is exhibiting all the signs of tiredness, and that it seems to have progressively drifted away from various sections of those who supported it in the past, until what’s left seems more of a rump than a real party. After all, that was already understood by the reduction of the PN to a GonziPN rump.

There are various factors which militate against the aforesaid visit by the party elders to Dr Gonzi.

First of all, but this is true also in Britain, the post of prime minister carries an enormous amount of power of incumbency with it.

Secondly, there is no real alternative – there never is. Possible alternatives have been shipped away. Others would possibly divide the party even more than it is. Many wannabes are yet unproven and big only in their ambitions.

Thirdly, it can be validly argued that the government is still going ahead with its main projects in the coming months – the public transport reform, the Piano project, the power station extension, and other targets such as getting the deficit down, ratcheting up tourism figures, seeing the country on the road to sustainable growth, and so on.

Let the games begin. Contrary to what many might think, that the new political season, with no election coming up, is a dead season, it may well prove to be a really exciting time