Over the last couple of days, the Nationalist Party has discussed changes to its thinking and policies which will, in effect, remove what the Labour Party thought of as its particular competitive advantage.

Since his election as Labour leader, Joseph Muscat has thought it unnecessary to do more than sit back and wait for power to come to him on the back of his progressive declaration that, when he is prime minister, he will put forward a private member’s bill – not a government bill, heaven knows why – for divorce. As Pullicino Orlando demonstrated, Muscat needn’t have waited until he was prime minister, and now he must be kicking himself.

Muscat has made it his business to highlight at every opportunity the perceived differences between his progressive and liberal outlook and what his predecessor used to call ‘il-partit tal-moffa’. It is a tired tactic, one which eventually failed even Alfred Sant.

Some of these demonstrations of progressive liberalism are in themselves questionable. It is not very progressive or liberal to mark down as different anybody who is not a heterosexual Roman Catholic Maltese man, corralling all others into a ‘sezzjoni’ with a nice little label stuck on. That one is an atheist, so stick him on the front page of KullHadd. Those others are Muslim, so let’s hold a special party for them. Women go into the Sezzjoni Nisa, unless they are homosexual, in which case they can slot themselves into what smacks of the ‘freak box’, the Sezzjoni LGBT.

But that’s all right, because over the last couple of years, Joseph Muscat has systematically courted homosexual men for their vote, in an interesting exercise which shows us women that even in the gay patch in Malta, it’s all about the men. Very progressive, I don’t think.

Beyond that superficial level of interest in gay-related issues, promising everything but promising nothing, Muscat’s remaining tactic for election success is pledging pie-in-the-sky about water and electricity bills. He was slightly undone by his deputy leader’s historic performance on Bondi+ last Tuesday. The plans, described as being “clear as crystal”, quite obviously do not exist. If they did, one assumes that Anglu Farrugia would have been told about them, unless he is kept out of the loop because he is not trusted, which is worrying in itself.

Meanwhile, Marlene Farrugia (formerly Pullicino), who is Labour’s spokesman on water and electricity, instead of worrying about how she is going to answer questions on her party’s open-ended pledges, is – quite unbelievably – hard at work organising a weekend of festa-related activities at Charles Polidano’s Montekristo Estates, and trying to drum up interest in it on Facebook. It is enough to make one weep, if one had any tears left, that is.

The Nationalist Party’s ditching of its anti-divorce stance, and its fresh pledges at its general conference this weekend on the rights of gay couples, civil liberties, freedom of expression and individual privacy, make it even more pressing now for the Labour Party to get itself into gear and start talking policy. Quite frankly, at just over a year away from a general election, it’s already too late because anything devised now is going to be rushed, panicked and devoid of the deep roots of thought. But the fact remains that Joseph Muscat can no longer try to sell himself by telling us that he is liberal and progressive while his political enemies are not. We need more than that. We need the beef.

Actions speak louder than words and the Labour Party’s actions (and words, for that matter) fall far short of liberal and progressive. It is more than obvious which party – that short-sighted and really stupid blip about divorce aside – is the progressive and liberal one. And it’s certainly not the one which fought tooth and claw against EU membership. How Joseph Muscat can tell me that is he progressive and liberal when for years he was in my face telling me to vote against EU membership because we would be overcome by Sicilian hairdressers and my children would leave Malta to study and work (they did, and I’m thrilled for them) is quite beyond me to understand.

Part of being a good politician, or at least a good political adviser (or for that matter, a good political commentator) is the ability to sniff the wind. Over the past couple of weeks there has been a perceptible shift in opinion, with a massive backlash against the Nationalist MPs who have been making trouble for their own bitter and personal purposes, so much so that even they, in their egocentric self-absorption, have picked it up and have tucked their tail between their legs.

There has been a shift in how the Prime Minister is perceived: from the man with his finger in the dyke, trying to cope but drowning while all around him turn against him, to somebody holding up pretty well and even successfully as a small nucleus of self-interested individuals (“Boo! They’re right behind you”) try to do him in while causing trouble for everyone else and not caring as long as they do what they want.

This change in the way the Prime Minister is perceived is in part the result of a negative shift in perception of Joseph Muscat and those about him. They are looking increasingly incompetent and useless, at a loss as to how to even begin the process of making policy. At times, the ineptitude is almost dangerously comical, as when the man who would be our deputy prime minister, who brings together that risky mix of supreme self-confidence and near-total ignorance, found himself bewildered by even the most basic of questions on Bondi+ last Tuesday.

The craziness of the situation was brought home fully when the interviewer said, as Anglu Farrugia dodged questions on water and electricity because he is “not technical”, that had the vote of confidence failed in parliament, he could well have been deputy PM tomorrow, and yet he doesn’t know how to answer a straightforward question (to say nothing of not knowing that Austin Gatt is still responsible for Smart City).

It is pointless to have Labour tell us that it has some smart people behind the scenes, some clever economists and what-not. In a political party, the smart people have to be up front, and if there are also some smart ones behind the scenes, then so much the better.

Now here’s a word of advice to be getting on with: any political party that labels itself liberal and progressive just cannot have Anglu Farrugia as a front man.

www.daphnecaruanagalizia.com