Franco Debono has taken, like his rival for the limelight Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, to fighting his tragic internecine battles on his Facebook wall. It’s only a matter of time before, like Jeffrey, he begins posting pictures of his breakfast, of him reading in bed, of the spaghetti the woman in his life cooks for him (let’s not get specific about which woman that might be), and of the kittens which follow him home occasionally

Yesterday, Franco – always one for a stale old chestnut - told his 5,001 Facebook friends that ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’. Shame, then, that he can’t write to save his life and that his syntax and grammar are peculiarly dreadful.

You won’t be deposing any despots with your punctuation, Franco, nor overthrowing any oligarchs. Try wearing a black beret, some dark glasses and strapping an ammo belt across your chest. That might work better.

Now that poor, tragic Franco is upping the ante once more, we can expect some competing stunt from the Haż-Żebbuġ tooth fairy. He’s already thrown same-sex marriage into the ring but can’t get Joseph and His Amazing North Face Coat to play ball on a private member’s bill. He can’t do abortion because he’s not that liberal and can’t handle the brickbats – and in any case, he felt it necessary to tell us, in the divorce debate, that he’s anti.

So what’s left? Not much, I’m afraid, apart from crossing the floor and making a public statement that it’s in honour of his grandfather, Labour politician Giuse Orlando (a friend of my Strickland activist grandfather, incidentally, so no aspersions there), who’s probably squirming in his grave at the behaviour of the grandson he never knew. I can see that’s what Joseph and Coconut Kurt are gunning for. They had a show on Super One TV last night – L-Istorja tal-Partit Laburista, the rewriting of history designed to inspire pride in the party – and a disproportionate part of it focussed on the trial, for sedition, I believe, of Jeffrey’s grandpa. ‘There you go,’ I thought to myself on my bright turquoise sofa, ‘so very transparent.’

If Franco carries on in this fashion, inspiring thoughts of prolonged stays at the Priory, where Kate Moss and others go when they are suffering from ‘exhaustion’, then Jeffrey will have no choice but to be even more dramatic. Instead of crossing the floor, he shall have to shed his clothes and streak across it, possibly pursued by some of those square-set chaps the Labour Party brought out at the counting-hall last Sunday, in their important black jackets marked CREW.

I am really tired of the inherent misogyny and belittling of women in speech and the media. The Labour Party, for all its much vaunted liberal principles and modernity, is one of the worst offenders. It actively selects and promotes in its media and on its political list mainly young women who fashion themselves in the mould of over-egged Italian ‘ragazze immagine’ with theatrical make-up and tortured hair, and champions their appearance and Middle Eastern grooming techniques over their intelligence, competence and abilities. It is no coincidence that a 23-year-old ‘ragazze immagine’ with far too much foundation and eye-shadow (you don’t need to wear any at that age) has been elected Labour mayor of Hal Qormi while the owner and promoter of Middle-Eastern-style grooming and hair removal salons has been elected Labour mayor of Zurrieq. Those are the values and standards.

The default position for a woman, if she is not trowelling on the make-up, getting her lady-garden trimmed into the shape of a heart at one of Natius’s salons, or trailing behind her husband the Great Leader in a pair of Gucci-print wellies, is in the kitchen. Joseph Muscat, the liberal socialist leader in his 30s, told his people last Sunday that they should head for homes and “talk to women in their kitchens”. Indeed – perhaps they could be really daring, break with the rules, and talk to some of those women while they’re disinfecting the lavatory with Toilet Duck instead, or make things even more simple and just stand on their doorstep and chat to them as they’re scrubbing it or polishing the brass knockers.

Then yesterday, the Labour Party’s news website, Maltastar, ran a leading article which mentioned, in passing, somebody called “Gonzi’s wife”. That’s right: Gonzi’s wife. You know, that thing in a skirt suit which is occasionally attached to Gonzi’s side, the one not wearing Gucci-print wellies to brave the weather and vote. Maybe it’s not just misogyny. Maybe it’s just the appalling manners of people raised in the gutter who think that buying an Alfa Romeo and a North Face jacket (and some Gucci-print silver wellies) is enough to get them out of it.