The opinion polls continue to show a virtually unassailable lead for Joseph Muscat over Lawrence Gonzi. But in the febrile and volatile atmosphere that characterises Maltese politics, no polling lead is ever certain. It is not yet impossible for the Nationalist Party to win the next election, merely improbable.

To achieve an improbable turn-around will require a bold campaign by the Prime Minister. On present trends, there seems to be no hope for Lawrence Gonzi, so he must try to alter the trends. The aim should be to try to persuade the voters to reassess him and his government. That process ought to start with an objective, impartial defence of the government’s record, warts and all, not the electoral propaganda which has marked the campaign thus far.

At the moment, many voters – even including formerly loyal Nationalists, as well as the all-important floating voters – believe that the government’s record is easily summarised: arrogant, divisive and out of touch with the lives of ordinary people. This is largely Gonzi’s fault. He has made no attempt to explain himself over many of the decisions he took which hurt people where it matters most (their pockets) and undermined faith in his government.

The crass handling of the steep increases in water and electricity rates, the secretive attempt to raise ministerial pay, the extraordinary mishandling of the divorce referendum and the extreme fractiousness and internal disunity of the party he led, still rankle with voters. They stick in the gullets of ordinary people, yet Gonzi has never fully given his version of why he acted as he did on these particular matters, preferring instead to highlight only those aspects where his government has done well – of which, in fairness, there are many.

At the time Gonzi took the decisions, the tacit assumption must have been that it would be unnecessary to offer any explanation or plea in mitigation for what he did. Unnecessary, because the government’s economic success while the rest of southern Europe suffered would be sufficient on its own to assuage voters’ feelings.

That strategy has failed. Although the public is intelligent enough to see the economic pain and disarray that have afflicted Greece, Spain, and other so-called PIGS, they fail to make a logical connection between the global economic recession and their own protected lives in Malta. What they feel is that their limited means have been hard-hit by the steep rise in water and electricity charges and other cost of living increases. The damage to the government’s reputation as a result of the perception that it cares little for the problems of ordinary families trying to make ends meet therefore endures.

There is only one way to alter that, and it involves doing something that no Maltese Prime Minister has ever attempted. Mr Gonzi should commission an intellectually respectable audit of his government’s record. Even at this late stage, with less than two months to go to the election, it would not be impossible to draw up an honest, independent and objective audit of what has been achieved and also, most importantly, what has gone wrong. This would obviously include an acknowledgment that mistakes have been made.

Until Gonzi personally admits that errors were committed and that some things went wrong, the voters will not believe that anything has gone right. This involves both humility and contrition. Not only is there much more to be said on the government’s behalf than appears generally recognised, but also for the most part the mistakes were genuinely meant for the common good of the country, or at least done with the best of intentions. Although the government must take the blame for the divisiveness of its policies and its gross misjudgements on ministerial pay and the divorce referendum, it is also entitled to take credit for its economic performance. The independent auditing exercise should ideally have been undertaken at least a year ago. To do so now would involve risks. But it is essential if Gonzi is to regain the electorate’s trust.

Nor is the admission of errors the only task required of the Prime Minister. He has another he has not so far achieved, try though he has. The difficulties for Gonzi of dealing with Joseph Muscat, with his attractive personality and his ability to be all things to all men (and women), cannot be underestimated.

There is little point in drawing attention to Labour’s past and trying to link Joseph Muscat to it, as the GonziPN machine has tried to do. He was born half way through Mintoff’s first post-independence administration. He was not even a teenager when the worst elements of Labour misgovernance came to the fore under “KMB”. Joseph Muscat has declared that entire era of former Labour government past history and has gone to great efforts, successfully, to distance himself from it. There is nothing – by which I mean nothing effective – that the Nationalist Party can do about it. To hark back to it may chime with elderly Nationalist supporters, but has little relevance to the situation today.

To counter Joseph Muscat’s personal popularity with the voters, Gonzi will have to resort to a desperate stratagem that no politician would attempt except in extremis. He will have to paint a different picture of the Prime Minister-in-waiting, which gets as close as possible to the truth – or at least the received truth so far as we have been able to discern it thus far.

This is not that Joseph Muscat is a crypto-Mintoffian or a crypto-socialist. The voters will not buy it. Rightly. He is none of those things politically. Indeed, politically he is as much a “Nationalist” in his policies as Lawrence Gonzi, albeit the arguments lie in the detailed execution of those policies. Joseph Muscat has stolen the Nationalists’ clothes and thrown in a few additional sweeteners for good measure.

However, what voters might buy into is the charge that Joseph Muscat is a policy-lite, crypto-Nationalist with no formed policies of his own (except, for better or worse, the recently unveiled energy policy). In the run-up to the American presidential elections last year, someone asked a political aide about his master’s attitude to sin. “He’s against it” came the reply. Up to now, that has been taken as the acme of political cynicism and shallowness. No longer. Unless Joseph Muscat comes up with a properly formulated and coherent policy manifesto, he can rightly be accused of having taken that shallowness and turned it into a political programme.

So far, Joseph Muscat has got away with it. He has been able to do so because Gonzi has been too enmeshed for the last 15 months or more in his party’s own travails – disunited, at any moment on the point of collapse − to give a coherent account of himself. Unless and until that is rectified, the cypto-Nationalist is steadily en route to the Auberge de Castille on 10th March.

On the present evidence, Gonzi’s days are numbered. Desperate situations call for desperate actions. He should admit the errors that have been committed, and change the focus of attack on his opponent.