For the benefit of all readers in general, and for the information of Labour supporters in particular, and also to satisfy the wish of Eddy Privitera, I am giving some details about Mintoff's negotiations about integration with Italy.

 The following quotations are lifted, word for word from Giovanni Bonello's  Histories of Malta and Henry Frendo's  The Origins of Maltese Statehood.  What you'll be reading is not the personal opinion of the authors.  They simply give the facts.
Histories of Malta, Vol 2 page 243:  The furtive plans for Malta' integration with Italy, which Mr Mintoff fell back on when negotiations for  independence were in full swing, had been revealed before, but Frendo goes a long way to substantiate in minute detail that political paradox.  And more paradoxical it could not have been.
Mintoff had inherited the bulk of the defunct Constitutionals, for whom to be anti-Italian levitated to a religious tenent.  They derived great pleasure and political mileage too, in branding the Nationalists as pro-Italian traitors.  And here was the leader of the anti-Italian movement formally (but secretly) negotiating integration with Italy, a measure which the mainstream of the traditional pro-Italian party had never dreamt of.
Another irony is that these top-secret negotiations between Mintoff and his Italian interlocutors were known from the outset to the British authorities.  Sir Edward Wakefield, the British Commissioner to Malta, during a cocktail party greeted the flabbergasted Italian Consul who was secretly conspiring with Mintoff with a breezy "Hello Dr Messina, how is integration with Italy going?"  The reception must have turned sour on poor Onofrio.
The Origin of Maltese Statehood goes in much greater detail and it  would be a very lengthy process to present all quotations, so I limit myself to a couple of quotes.  Whoever is interested should go to page 327, Chapter 12, "Oltre Mare"  The Italian Option.
I quote p. 333:  Some such plan had been hibernating in Mintoff's mind ever since 1946/7.....After the Labour Party split in 1949, as a result of which Mintoff ousted Boffa from party leader, there was a conversation between two Boffist Ministers, Dr Arthur Colombo and Dr Joseph Cassar in the presence of Vivian De Gray, then police superintendent.  In the course of this conversation, Mintoff's idea for Malta's integration with Italy had been brought up.  De Gray  remembered Dr Colombo saying, in Cassar's presence, that one day while they were on a roof top somewhere, Mintoff had come up with the proposal that "they should integrate with Italy"..................De Gray was reacting with quick reflexes to a question posed to him by this writer in 1989 as to whether the suggestion that Mintoff may have desired an integration with Italy would surprise him:  That does not surprise me at all"   In recalling Dr Colombo's words, De Gray commented that "probably that was when they were expecting the Communist Party to come to power in Italy".
One final quotation from page 345:  Mr Mintoff secretive enquires in Italy "about the prospect of an association between Malta and Italy" were known to Archbishop Gonzi..........The Archbishop told me that knowing what the standard of living was in Sicily, he could see no advantage to Malta in any form of "integration" with Italy.
If Mr Privitera wants more information, he can read chapter 12 where he'll find all the details. Whether these details are correct or not is not up to me to decide, but I think that the two learned gentlemen who wrote the books knew what they were talking about.
Giovanni DeMartino,
Mosta