This time last year, the Labour leader was out of action and his wife, who has no party role or Constitutional role but appears not to know it, got into a power-tussle with Anglu Farrugia in taking over as many of his public duties as she could.

I can’t say I blame her. Every time Anglu ‘Empire Station’ Farrugia makes a public appearance, the result seems to be embarrassing for Labour. He’s an absolute treat on Facebook, where he was last found wishing Dom Mintoff ‘ad miltos anni’. This is a man who graduated summa cum laude in law from the University of Malta, mind. At least he knows how to spell that bit of Latin because he can copy it off his ‘certifikat’.

The trouble is, Michelle ‘Nohrog Bir-Rollers’ Muscat isn’t any better. When you promote a man way beyond his abilities, you’ll often find his wife is even more unfit for purpose. I suppose it’s a blessing in disguise that the husband doesn’t like state dinners and formal occasions so the wife has to stay away too.

We were told during the blazing heat back then that Joseph Muscat had fractured his leg during the August Moon Ball (which is no longer a formal occasion). While we raised our eyebrows at this, especially when we heard that his cracked leg hadn’t stopped him getting aboard a cruise liner for a tour of the Med courtesy of Norman Hamilton Travel, we thought we had better believe it because the alternative was too depressing.

This lampuki season – a far better term for the enervating news-free period the British call the silly season – Muscat is making a point of being seen and heard as often as possible, especially while the Prime Minister is off on vacation until the end of the month, leaving the field wide open to il-Mexxej Laburista (not that we want to hear either of them right now).

And so his advisers are kept busy coming up with ways to get his name and face in the press as respite for the rest of us from reports on shark attacks in the Seychelles, the private life of Cyrus Engerer and Nikita Zammit Alamango’s magic ways with the internet.

One of those bright ideas got him and Michelle police protection, after he said that a man who shot two people dead in a cocaine-fuelled frenzy should not have got time off for good behaviour in prison. The ex-convict, also called Muscat, asked to meet the Labour leader and the Labour news website reported that “he was shot down”. It’s getting dangerous at Mile End.

For his next trick, Muscat braved the heat and trotted off to the Barrakka Gardens to lay a wreath at Lord Strickland’s feet, a propos of nothing at all. Labour’s communications wizards released a statement saying that he did this to recognise Strickland’s commitment to “social and progressive legislation”.

Whoever was responsible for this cunning plan hadn’t thought things through. The space beneath the online reports of this outing with a bunch of flowers was immediately jammed solid with sarcastic remarks. Was this the same Lord Strickland whose family printing-press and newspaper building were burned down by the Labour mob? Why didn’t Joseph Muscat take two wreaths, turn right after exiting the gardens, and lay the second one at the door of Strickland House, in recognition of Labour’s commitment to press freedom?

And on it went.

You can see the so-called reasoning behind this daft idea. Muscat, having exhausted all options in targeting gay men – as distinct from lesbians, because in Malta even homosexuality is chauvinistic – has now moved on to the next market segment: former Stricklandjani. If the ones I know are anything to go by, it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than a wreath beneath a statue to get them to fancy Muscat as prime minister any time soon, but it’s not going to stop our Man From Mile End chancing his luck. Forsi ikun wortit.

A couple of months ago, I wrote a piece saying that the mistake the Nationalist Party makes is to fail to understand that its support base in some of its key electoral districts is actually a coalition of true-blue Nationalists and people from former ‘Stricklandjani’ families who would rather drink ink than vote for the party that gave Malta Dom Mintoff, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, Alfred Sant and now, Joseph Muscat. Somebody at Mile End must have sat up and taken notice – though it can’t have been Jason Micallef because, as he told the magistrate’s court under oath, he has no idea I write a newspaper column or a blog and thinks I am a writer of cookery books. No wonder he was so very useful as secretary-general.

Of course, the idea might also have come to Muscat as he stood and listened to the speeches as an honoured guest at the opening of the new ‘Strickland’ printing-press a few weeks ago. There are moments when I wish I were a cartoonist because some things just don’t translate into writing. As I looked at a press photograph of the Labour leader standing bug-eyed in wonder as he looked around, I pictured a ‘think bubble’ above his head, with the words ‘Bloody hell, burning this down is going to be one heck of a business.’ Or, I suppose, ‘Istja, man. Mur ahraqa lil din. Tal-genn.’

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