Our foreign minister told the press yesterday that the situation in Libya has reached “the point of no return”. Really, the point of no return is now? I don’t think Tonio Borg, like John Dalli before him, understands just how much he gives away when he pops out with something like that. Saying that this is the point of no return is very different to saying, as Cameron and Obama did, that it’s not over until it’s over.

When you say that this is the point of no return you reveal that up until now you thought there was a possibility that the situation might somehow miraculously reverse itself and all could return to normal, with Gaddafi as top dog and people in Malta doing business with his henchmen and his sons and giving them large slices of the pie.

The only difference in that case would be the obvious one: that Maltese politicians and businessmen would no longer be able to delude themselves, as they did for 41 years, that Libyans loved Gaddafi and that Gaddafi kept them happy. There was something terribly racist in that sentiment and it annoyed me to no end: the assumption that Libyan people are an inferior sort of human being content to survive with very little and even be happy to live without education, deprived of human rights, and with the ever-present terror of torture and imprisonment without trial, or trial by a kangaroo court.

Tonio Borg is an intelligent man and he is a foreign minister. So for crying out loud, even if he is not a tactical strategist or military man, he should know enough about international relations and foreign policy to have been able to work out that the ‘point of no return’ was actually a long way back at the start of all this, when the UN Security Council voted for intervention in Libya.

There is no way that the United States, the United Kingdom and France would have undertaken to bomb Gaddafi’s military holdings and arm those fighting against him unless it was with the unspoken commitment to keep at it until he was gone, no matter what it took or how long it took.

They were in it for the duration and in it until he goes. That much should have been obvious even to grown-ups who believe in Father Christmas, but drowning men clutch at straws of hope and there is little doubt that certain politicians and businessmen in Malta are, in the Libyan context, drowning.

The point that newspaper reports and commentaries constantly miss is the fact that Maltese businesses in Libya are, with remarkably few exceptions, imperilled not because of the strife and violence, which are temporary, but because of the consequences, which are permanent. Maltese businessmen and certain politicians have lost their entire network of contacts, built up over years, and of Gaddafi-regime (or Gaddafi-family) partners which made the business possible in the first place.

To some it will be a relief not to have to pay off this or that Gaddafi or bring Saadi, Seif, Mohammad, Mutassim or Aisha (or their mother) in as a silent partner. But to others, the prospect is little short of a nightmare, because the privileged and protected status they maintained in the Libyan market through methods that are illegal in Europe is no more.

They sit there and contemplate with trepidation a situation in which, as soon as things settle down, the Libyan market will be flooded with competing businesses from all over the world. The names they bandied about before, the connections on which they traded, already mean nothing.

You can understand the quite apparent resentment in people like John Dalli, who speak with barely concealed bitterness about the events in Tripoli. For around 15 years and more, while he was a cabinet minister in the Maltese government, he built up an extensive network of Gaddafi regime contacts mainly in Tripoli. He used those contacts as the basis for a ‘do business in Libya’ consultancy, promoting them without embarrassment on the internet. Those contacts are now worth less than nothing. Indeed, as somebody who was ‘in’ with the Gaddafi regime, he is probably worse off than businessmen who had no contacts there at all. And to make matters worse, the fact that he is now an EU Commissioner, and not a Maltese cabinet minister in an ‘anything goes’ situation, means that he gets to sit there and chafe, able to do nothing while others get in ahead of him.

What did Tonio Borg imagine, for heaven’s sake - that David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy and Barack Obama would spend months bombing the hell out of Gaddafi’s military and then, when all was settled and ‘back to normal’, go back to signing deals with him after giving him a slap on the back and telling him ‘No hard feelings. We did it only to protect civilians. Now about that bunker project...‘.

After the UN Security Council vote, there was no turning back. And when there is no turning back, that is by definition the point of no return, however much you might hope that Father Christmas will stick his head down the chimney and say hello.

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The Labour Party never disappoints, does it? In its statement about the fall of Tripoli, written after hours of deliberation and issued over the signature of shadow foreign minister George Vella, because the party leader is 1. out of his depth, and 2. on holiday in Italy, there is no mention of Muammar Gaddafi.

I would like to exclaim that is unbelievable, or incredible, but I can’t because it is exactly what was expected. Since this crisis started, no Labour Party exponent has been able to utter the man’s name unless it is in the context of some daft report on Super One or Maltastar. But now it has come to this: opposition fighters over-run Gaddafi’s compound, he is hunted, and the Labour Party still can’t speak about him.

A few months ago the party leader’s excuse of prudence and caution might have been driven by fear of reprisals in the form of damage to the Labour Party’s network of contacts and possible drip-feed of cash. Now that it is demonstrably clear that there can be no hope of either of those things continuing, the refusal to speak ill of Gaddafi or even call him by name can be due to one thing only: a mixture of misguided love, admiration and respect. All those of my generation know – because we had no choice but to live with it – that the Labour Party was in bed with Gaddafi. What we didn’t know was that the sex was so damned good.