Let us take, not one, but several steps back, so as to, hopefully, try and make some sense of all that is happening.

With Parliament adjourned for summer recess, things have actually livened up more. Free from the threat of Parliament having to vote and the government again being outvoted, the Nationalist Party promptly declared that the three rebels would not be allowed to contest the next election. Two of the three had already said they would not be contesting. The third, Franco Debono, had said he was invited by the Prime Minister to contest, something that was promptly denied by the Office of the Prime Minister.

That decision has cleared the air somewhat. The government is now no longer suffering the indignity of holding back its horses afraid that the rebels may bring it down. Once Parliament resumes in October, the three or any of them may bring the government down and it will be an autumn or winter election. If the government manages to stagger on intact for at least three weeks, the election will be next year, after Christmas. But the government may survive longer than mid-October.

Last Sunday, the opinion poll carried out by Misco for The Sunday Times showed the PN doing even worse than in the past months. Not only was there no bounce after the Franco Debono onslaught on Carm Mifsud Bonnici or the JPO one on Richard Cachia Caruana: the PN government continued to slide downwards in the poll.

Whatever sheen one may put on it, this is what the polls, taken at face value, say. There is however a large swathe of the usual unknowns and would-not-says. My basic feeling is that people, whatever their political beliefs or allegiances, did not look kindly on a government being meek and humble when it was being slapped around the face.

Then there is the great dichotomy: the other more general questions showed that people are mostly concerned about the economy, their jobs (with Malta having the fifth lowest unemployment level in Europe), the electricity rates, and the economy in general while all indicators show the Maltese economy to be one of the less-afflicted economies in the eurozone.

So while the Maltese in general are concerned about their personal financial situation, the outside reality is that the Maltese economy is doing quite well, but this perception is not percolating down to people level.

Then there is a further dichotomy: the interest is focused more on whatever the trio of rebels do, say or are said to do, than about the more important macroeconomic issues.

There are parallels everywhere. In the last days of Berlusconi, the Italians were more interested in the stream of revelations about the bunga-bunga parties and what went on in his various villas than in macro-economic issues. Mario Monti’s austere and sedate lifestyle have focused attention on the macro-economic issues and the Italians, as a result, are more depressed than ever.

So too in France. The fixation with Sarkozy and Carla Bruni has now given way to a fixation about François Hollande as the typical hen-pecked man whose present lover is forever wrestling with the mother of his children. Never a dull day.

Here in Malta the three rebels, even today, are still the source of most news stories, artfully fed on each other and spun on a complaisant press that just does not ask questions. One would have thought that following Thursday’s decision the three would quieten down. Instead, the opposite has happened. You just have to look at today’s front pages to see that. It’s not just because it is still far too early for the three to pipe down. They intend to make the most of their now curtailed political life.

It is a mistake to lump them together as the three rebels. Each has a personality of his own. Perhaps the most surprising is Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando. Even while disagreeing with him, one has to admire his inventiveness.

JPO has become the man the Nationalists just love to hate. And yet there was an astute political observer (J’Accuse, I believe) who has argued that JPO may yet get the PN to win the elections just as, on a very different level, he can claim to have won the 2008 one (I disagree with this statement).

JPO was the one who, like a flash of lightning in a summer sky, came up with the divorce issue this time two years ago and in a turbulent year created a new majority in the country and put the entire party leadership in a minority.

Maybe, or rather certainly, he is a maverick and in the post-divorce months stayed rather in the shade and let Franco Debono, with whom he at times disagrees, take the limelight.

Now, seemingly emboldened by Franco’s defenestration of Carm Mifsud Bonnici, he has rounded on Cachia Caruana with a vindictive streak many did not know existed in him (JPO). And not content with bringing about Cachia Caruana’s resignation from Permanent Representative, he is now gunning for his expulsion from the party.

He of course would be the first to realise he doesn’t have a hope in hell. The same unanimity (OK, with a show of hands, not with a secret ballot – that is the PN tradition as the latter is the PL one. Both end up with the same unanimity) that decided the three will not be allowed to contest will surely throw out JPO’s motion even if, implausible as it sounds, JPO were to prove his three points.

Besides, a PN executive council is no substitute for a court, as any lawyer could tell JPO. Nor is it any substitute for a parliamentary committee, although these tend to be rather ineffective. Here, even though I disagree with him, I am afraid Franco Debono is right.

Take Cachia Caruana’s decision yesterday to sue Joe Mizzi. The ensuing court case will take years and years and maybe in five years’ time, when we have all hopefully moved on to better things, the judgement will be out. (Or maybe too, there will be some quiet transaction between the parties and the issue is quietly buried – it happens).

The main issue is I cannot, for the life of me, see what JPO tried to do with his motion to expel Cachia Caruana from the party. And there was I praising JPO for his strategic skills!

With nothing better to do, the country sits back and enjoys, out of morbid amusement, the sight of this internecine feud. For all the unanimity in Thursday’s vote, and even some banter that apparently took place, it is equally clear the three are not alone. At one point JPO had said that 10 government MPs were with him in his criticism of Cachia Caruana. When challenged, he did not provide any name. And the backbenchers all signed a declaration disassociating themselves.

But anybody who gets out and about and speaks quietly to backbenchers here or there, or even executive committee members, surely finds as many dissenters as I find. The difference is that none dares raise his head above the parapet.

Ultimately, however, the responsibility for the present situation lies with the party leadership, and Dr Gonzi in particular, for having allowed these, let us call them, bad apples, to contest in 2008 without proper background checks. (Some, like JPO and Mugliett, go back to previous elections). That, I say, is Dr Gonzi’s notorious short-termism come back to haunt him.

JPO is a very good example of this. The Mistra saga is always centre to the issue. When Dr Sant got wind of that, JPO created the now notorious smoke screen: he ran after Dr Sant, confronted him in the television studio, broke down and cried at the PN meeting in Mosta. When Dr Sant finally got round to revealing the entire background, with documents and all, it was far too late to turn the election round. In the meantime, as we now know, JPO had been given a crash course in responding to Dr Sant’s accusations by the PN core group of advisers.

The instability of the present government dates back to this original sin. If the Maltese electorate is holding back and refusing to skip and dance when it is ordered to, maybe there is scepticism it is being lied to as it was in 2008. The spin has come round and is now biting at the ankles. There is no bounce because we have bounced enough.

It is only right that dissent in the way it was voiced by the three cannot be allowed in any party (especially with the vindictiveness and outbursts of spite there have been). But if one looks closely at some of the comments that are being made, at some of the positioning that’s being done, it is clear this is all being done in anticipation of one and only one outcome: the coming defeat of the Nationalist Party and the inevitable reckoning (maybe bloodbath) that comes with it.

Call me defeatist, but I cannot see the present leadership engaging in real, substantive dialogue with those who have given up, those who have been sidelined, those whose advice has been disregarded, in enough time to bring about a restoration of party unity in time for the general election.

The government is doing quite well to address issues that have been festering for years (the latest is the thousands of apartments with sanitary issues) and in addressing issues that should have been remedied years ago, but the biggest obstacle is the simmering disenchantment of people who used to vote PN and have now given up. That is the most significant of last Sunday’s poll results.

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