People who voted No were unlikely to then vote for Labour candidates because the No vote is tied up to a great deal of emotion and No voters were angrier at Muscat for his stance than they were at the Opposition leader’s, which was most unconvincing. To the average No voter, Simon Busuttil is somebody who is personally against bird-killing – everything about him tells you that – but who said what he did because he had to for strategic reasons. No voters didn’t like that stance and would have preferred some straightforward honesty to political strategy, but the main thing to them is that Busuttil doesn’t strike them as somebody indifferent to birds and conservation but rather the opposite.

Muscat, on the other hand, comes across as though he doesn’t give a damn if birds are shot in their thousands as long as it doesn’t affect him personally or his career trajectory. He doesn’t strike anybody at all as a bird-lover, a nature-lover, or a conservationist who appreciates animal life and ecology. He comes across as the ultimate utilitarian. No voters understand this instinctively, and so, even if they voted for him in the last general election and celebrated afterwards at their amazing Taghna Lkoll choice, they will not, this time, have moved their pencil straight from a No vote in the referendum to numbering Labour candidates from 1 to 10. They will not have voted at all or they will have voted for Nationalist candidates.

Muscat thought that tying the spring hunting referendum in with local council elections would guarantee him a massive win by bringing out the hunting/Labour vote. In reality, it did the opposite: it brought out the PN vote and others who usually couldn’t be fagged to vote in local council elections, most of whom tend by definition to be Nationalist Party supporters because they are less militant and obsessed and that’s why they don’t bother with council elections.

Take me, for instance – I’m the perfect illustration of that. I don’t vote in local council elections and become very annoyed at those ‘round up the vote’ telephone calls asking me why I haven’t gone to vote, do I need help, you know you haven’t yet voted, and so on. My view is that it makes no difference to me (or, I suspect, to Mosta) whether the council is predominantly Labour or predominantly Nationalist, and I don’t know any of the candidates so I couldn’t be bothered. I don’t think it even makes a difference whether Mosta has a council or not, but let’s not go there. So I have only voted twice in local council elections, and both times it was because I was in the polling-booth anyway, having gone there for a referendum vote. I can’t remember whether the other time was divorce or EU membership. The Nationalist Party candidates got my vote in these council elections whereas they wouldn’t have otherwise because I wouldn’t have voted. I was only there because of the referendum.

The Labour vote would have turned up anyway. They always do, because they see supporting a political party like supporting a football club and doing the rivals in. And the hunting vote is mainly Labour anyway, so there were going to be no gains for Labour in using the referendum to bring out the vote. It worked mainly to the Nationalist Party’s advantage.

The main benefit I see here is that Busuttil and his party have got the confidence boost they need. There is nothing worse than seeing your opponents behave as badly as they please while not being penalised by the electorate, even as you are penalised instead in what appears to be a sadistic delight in kicking people when they’re down.