I waited all through last weekend hoping that someone picks up the story, but none did.

It's mid-summer, after all, when thoughts turn to holidays, beach, parties and the like.

It's still strange how such a significant development was not noticed at all, not even by the minuscule media outfit around the Leader of the Opposition.

To explain, I have to bring in my own past and to go back some years. I have written about it some other time(s) so I do not have to recount all the details for the focus is not on me.

Some years ago, when still editing the daily, I fell foul of a PN MP for allowing a letter by John Zammit calling him all sorts of names for a robust anti-abortion speech in Parliament.

The MP raised a Breach of Privilege claim and this was processed in following weeks in the Privileges Committee. Just like Dr Busuttil's.

I have written about this in other times, ‘in tempi non sospetti’. The Privileges Committee meetings were a lark. Some MP on the committee would ask a question and Emy Bezzina, representing John Zammit, the writer of the letter, would launch into a half hour rigmarole speech (which he is very well versed to do). Another question, and Emy would launch a repeat of the first speech with perhaps a word changed here or there.

After three useless sittings, the MPs got fed up with all these meetings and repetitions and they practically sat on the MP to close the issue. We never apologised (though we should have) and despite what Mr Zammit wrote on Facebook, we did not win the case, but the committee declared the case over and kicked us out. Which we were very glad to do.

Now Dr Busuttil has gone better. Everyone knows how the case began: Dr Busuttil made some maybe over the top remarks and Prime Minister Muscat saw red and claimed a Breach of Privilege. That was even more immature than anything Dr Busuttil said.

The Breach of Privilege claim opens a well-defined parliamentary process that goes back in time to when such claims were taken very seriously, although a recent Council of Europe Court did away with the possibility of jailing the culprit.

Even so, there was enough time for Dr Muscat to find some way of shelving the process, but he characteristically did not.

So what has happened, especially at the last meeting on 31 July, was that Dr Busuttil neatly turned the tables and from the accused became the accuser. He went back to the original subject matter which had to do with the charge against John Dalli being withdrawn and got the former Commissioner of Police John Rizzo to testify with some quite damaging claims being brought up.

Next on the list, when Parliament resumes, and the Committee reconvenes is OLAF’s Giovanni Kessler. Dr Busuttil has been very able to turn the situation around in that it almost seems as if it is the prime minister who is being accused.

Now this is a skirmish, not more, in the parliamentary battle between government and Opposition, a procedure that the government, with its majority not just in the House but also in the committee, can easily and effectively douse. Which is what will most probably happen. And all can move on.

Although he has been in the House in Valletta only for a few months, Dr Busuttil has proved to be a redoubtable player where his training as a lawyer stands him in good stead.

Over the past months he has improved his delivery and his standing, when one considers the rather generalised scepticism which surrounded his election. He still has many mountains to climb and battle to wage, not least inside his own party and in his immediate surroundings. And of course the cut and parry of parliamentary debate is not the be-all and end-all of political argument. You don’t win elections on the basis of a parliamentary debate or two, not even of a TV one.

The PN leader is taking all sorts of pains to project himself and his party as having overcome the great divide on social issues such as divorce and civil unions and putting all that at the back and moving on, as he did yesterday with his speech on drugs.

But while it is undoubted that the social issues contributed to Labour’s huge victory and definitely the stubborn refusal of the previous PN administration to countenance anything remotely looking like opening just a window on such issues, there are now far more issues to tackle.

The Labour massive victory is unravelling in parts, has lost two MPs already to all extent and purposes and is dangerously near to be portrayed as being just a vehicle to put more and more core members on the public payroll. Even so, there are many people out there who are happy with the government’s performance and its claim it has implemented its electoral pledge of cutting down on electricity rates and who cannot see any decrease in the standard of living despite figures and statistics to the contrary.

Nor can Dr Busuttil be said to have finished his Herculean task of reforming the party into a battle formation. He has still many useless branches to lop off, faces that remind one of the past administration, a deep dysfunctionality in many areas of the party. If people think that being in Opposition helps, they haven’t the slightest idea what such a turnaround entails. It’s even harder in Opposition.

Then there are what I call the great gear changes that need to be done, if and only if the party is convinced by its leader this is what has to be done. It is not a question of taking a leaf out of Dr Muscat’s book, but this is what he managed to do and the anxiety to get back in power after so many years worked wonders.

In my opinion, but of course I may be wrong, Dr Busuttil must calibrate and balance the move towards a more social stance since this is clearly what the country, rightly or wrongly, wants, with a move to a more nationalistic stance, which is after all what the party has always been in name and in fact.

It is true PN was the party that brought Malta into the EU but it must be very careful to shake off the image it is the EU-phile as against Joseph Muscat’s anything but the EU stance. At some point in the past, Nerik Mizzi incarnated Dom Mintoff’s ‘Malta l-ewwel u qabel kollox’ before that slogan was coined.

When all is considered, one is not sure what Dr Muscat stands for: does he stand for the EU since he boasted Malta will be the best in Europe or does he stand with anything as long as it is outside the EU as his deals with China make it out to seem? There is huge scope there for a robust nationalism.

So too the perceived ineptitude in the face of events in Libya, about which we can do little but which can engulf us in crises we have no inkling of. The government is being anything but nationalistic in its approach to all that is happening – yet another opening for a robust PN stance.

The procedural victory in the skirmish called Privileges Committee is thus small crumbs compared to the task ahead.