After a rather inordinate Summer Recess, the House of Representatives reconvenes again this evening.

We had got rather used to silence from that part of the nation, and, before that, we had got rather used to the scenes from the House which does not seem to have become used to the idea it is televised.

In case anybody thinks that it is only in our House that such scenes occur, one may have a look at the unruly scenes from the Italian Senate, no less with an attempt at aggression included.

The House has a long list of bills to discuss between now and the end of this session, most importantly the Budget that will be presented next Monday.

But the House is also the place where the normal confrontation between the parties takes place. While the dialectic takes place everywhere today, from the Sunday ‘sermons’ to the news bulletins of the party TV stations, from the endless streams of statements and press releases arriving on our smart phones to the coffee mornings, etc that the parties organize, it is in Parliament that the dialectic finds its real focus.

It is now roughly midway through this legislature and no electoral polls are expected until the next general election. But it is normal in our political scenario that the second half of the legislature is one endless crescendo of hype in the run-up to the election. Hence one expects the new session to be quite sparkling with partisan fireworks.

This dialectic can be put context when one considers the result of the poll carried yesterday by MaltaToday.

Somehow, and for reasons it knows best, the paper chose to downplay its own results preferring to entitle its piece by the news that “Muscat leads by 11 points as Busuttil gains trust boost’.

In actual fact, a close reading of the results of the poll, shows that:

-         The gap between the parties has been narrowed to just 4.1 points (January 2015: 9 points)

-         More Labour voters (4.1% in March, 27% now) prefer Simon Busuttil.

-         One-third of the switchers who voted PN in 2008 and PL in 2013 now intend to vote PN.

-         8% of PL voters in 2013 say they will vote for PN against just 5% of PN voters who say they will vote PL

-         Muscat still leads Busuttil by 11 points in the trust stakes and gained one point since June but Busuttil gained three points since June.

-         Muscat still commands a stronger following than his party whereas Busuttil is only slightly more popular than his party.

And so on. Obviously all this stands to be confirmed or changed by other eventual polls.

In short, in mid-term, the parties are moving back from the votes they polled in the last general election – Labour is losing its extreme and unprecedented lead while PN seems to be gaining back some of those who turned their backs on it in 2013.

If one were to draw trend lines from this and other polls, it may mean we could be heading for a cliff-hander election once again.

All this context prepares the way for another exciting session of the House of Representatives. Let’s hope this means more enlightening debates rather than verbal skirmishes and/or worse.