Ed Miliband has been Labour Party leader and Leader of the Opposition for just a year, and Britain is at least three years away from a general election. But over the last few weeks he has come under increasingly heavy fire for his failure to devise any sort of policy or to explain exactly what Labour is for.

Political commentators are hard at work ripping him to shreds. Even those who tentatively held out hope at first have given him a good hammering and made no secret of their disappointment. “Ed Miliband has no policies and seems proud of it” was one title, and in the text was the gem “Ed Miliband hit the ground crawling.”

Meanwhile, back on the ranch in Malta, our own Dear Joseph has sat in Cuschieri’s seat as Leader of the Opposition for three years, and has been party leader for some months longer than that. We are around 18 months away from a general election. But have we sight or sound of a single policy initiative? No, we have not.

The story that the party faithful – perhaps that should be party gullible – are putting about is that Il-Guy and Dear Joseph have between them concocted the most amazing raft of policies, but because they are ‘wajs’ (in its Maltese meaning of ‘cunning’, rather than its English meaning of ‘wise’) they have taken inspiration from Edmund Blackadder.

They will not be revealing those policies lest that dreadful Lawrence Gonzi, who has no ideas of his own, steals them. In other words, Il-Guy and Dear Joseph are hiding their policies from the electorate, and by definition also from the party faithful who must have faith in them, so as to hide them from The Enemy.

I am not quite sure whether this reasoning should generate contempt, laughter or pity, but I am more inclined to the last where the gullible are concerned and the first for the Labour leader, his Wajs Guy, and the band of Cunning Chaps who surround them.

Now please pause a moment and try very hard to imagine, as though your life depended on it, Ed Miliband telling reporters that yes, he has plenty of policies but he’s damned if he will reveal them to the electorate because that David Cameron and his sidekick Clegg might steal them.

You can’t, can you? That’s because Britain, for all its considerable warts and myriad problems, is possibly the most highly developed democracy in the world. Even a pink-velour-tracksuit-clad member of the underclass would probably understand what is horribly wrong with that reasoning. They know their rights.

Ed Miliband, who is already being toasted alive merely because he’s been there a year, the election is three years away and he hasn’t told electors what he plans to do, would be liberally doused in HP sauce and eaten for breakfast if he were to say anything of the kind. And that would be the end of him. Imagine the newspaper headlines.

But here the credulous continue to support a man who insults them gravely – to say nothing of democracy – by having the word spread that he is compelled to hide his policies from them so as to hide them from the Prime Minister.

Dear Joseph and Il-Guy – and those two stooges Anglu Farrugia and Toni Abela – have no idea of their responsibilities to the electorate but even less idea of the constitutional duties of the Opposition. The Opposition is not there primarily to work at becoming the government, but to keep the government in check and to, believe it or not, ensure that it governs better.

The Opposition, no less than the government, exists under the Constitution in service to the electorate. If it knows a way that something can be done better in government, it is obliged to say so – in the service not of the government, but of the governed. To keep close to his chest for years until the election a policy that he knows to be better than the current one, when it would serve the country well if he were to recommend it and discuss it in Parliament, is an abdication of the Leader of the Opposition’s constitutional and democratic duty.

The real reason that Dear Joseph and his Wajs Guy haven’t described their policies to us yet is, I suspect, that they haven’t devised any. But that is not the only point at issue. The other matter for serious concern is that they think hiding policies from the electorate until the 11th hour, when it is too late to subject them to debate, so as to hide them from their political rivals, is democratically acceptable.

They appear to believe that they are in business, where new research and development must be concealed from commercial rivals, and not in politics.

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