Maybe the first time he was carried away by the enthusiasm of the crowd. But when he repeated it, his message became intentional.

Chris Fearne aspires to become Prime Minister. Before that, he needs to win the election for the Labour leadership, a seat that was left vacant with the resignation of Joseph Muscat following links that were made to his office in police investigations into the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Fearne was considered to be the more restrained of the two contenders, the one with the more experience, the one who appeared to be less likely to commit mistakes in a leadership race being held during one of Malta’s toughest times in political history. Maybe, by being labelled as moderate, he felt that he was not appealing to the Labour core as much as the other contender, Robert Abela. And so he chose to go down to their level.

What is sure is that Fearne’s latest outspokenness has uncovered his mask, and beneath it many have discovered someone who is not less supercilious than the person he would like to succeed.

Speaking before Labour supporters as part of his campaign to win their votes on 11 January, Fearne said that in 2008 – it was the election that Labour lost by 1,500 votes – he had “sworn that he will never see a Nationalist government for as long as he lives”. How’s that for arrogance? We wish Fearne a very long and healthy life, but he should never have said something like that.

After that 2008 disappointment which must have really hurt Fearne, Labour had gone on to win the following election in 2013 and the one that came after it, in 2017. The PL is still by and large a great favourite to win the next election, in spite of the turmoil that it has led the country into – the PL has strong grassroots, most of whom follow the party blindly and would never dream of switching sides, whatever their party does.

In any other country, what happened in the last six weeks would have been enough to sway the voting population to the other side of the political spectrum. But Malta is unique in this regard and the situation within the Nationalist Party does not help. The PN is still too divided and too weak, with many traditional PN voters unable to identify themselves with the current leadership.

In his speech, Fearne went one further, saying that he would not like to have “RIP” written on his headstone. He would prefer “RIPN”, he said. How’s that for conceit? Fearne has now tried to patch things up by saying that his comment was intended to be tongue in cheek, but this does not reduce the extent of the insult.

Showing respect to others, especially to one’s adversaries in whatever sector, is something that distinguishes one person from another. In this case, it must be said that Fearne has failed miserably. It is understandable that politicians try to score points and it is also acceptable that they try to belittle their opponents – but vicious mockery and offence is not the way to do it.

This is more so at a time when Malta’s is nursing its wounds and trying to overcome a series of happenings that have dented national pride, caused so much pain and threw so much bad light on the country’s institutions, including the Office of the Prime Minister Fearne yearns to step into.

What is even worse is that, during the same activity, Fearne then spoke of the need for national unity – how can one believe he means it when in the same breath he dismissed nearly half the population as not being worth considering?