Now that the Christmas and New Year celebrations are over and we are still battling the pandemic, on a completely different level a new game is about to begin.

For this is around the time when serious thought starts to be paid to the coming general election. It is around 15 months away, unless Robert Abela does a Joseph Muscat and brings the date nearer.

The testimony we have been hearing at Court has revealed that planning for the election that was held in 2017 started in real earnest around 15 months before.

Of course, choosing the actual date would always be topmost in the prime minister’s mind and any prime minister would always be playing with dates in his mind.

The rest of the country, especially the Opposition, would always be second-guessing what’s going on in the prime minister’s mind and planning for any eventuality.

There are various ways in which a party plans for the election but a party, especially in Opposition, can find itself chasing cobwebs if not careful.

Many parties base their planning on the ubiquitous surveys of which we will get dose after dose in the months to come. But the 2017 example shows us that polls and surveys, if understood wrongly can lead to bad decisions and to failure.

There may be still time between now and the date to change and correct a party’s approach and improve the final result.

After all, in 2017 and before that, the writing was definitely one the wall but the party that should have learned from repeated poll defeats, the Nationalist Party, did not correct its approach and walked steadfastly to its biggest defeat.

The party then, as now, was under a new leader with a new untested team containing some old hands, losing quite a number of old hands and, we later learned, riven by internal feuds and some top brass that was all the time planning to unseat the leader and replace him with its choice.

We now know what happened next and how the new leader chosen by the disloyal rump was in turn turfed out after barely three years.

As a result, the party is today even more split than it was in 2017 and despite some efforts to heal the rift is still at sixes and sevens. This, to my mind, is the primary task facing the party leadership this side of the election.

Among the signs that the rift hasn’t healed is the non-appointment of a new shadow Cabinet. I tend to agree with the leader’s procrastination for any choice now might unleash further internal battles. Yes, the leadership is that weak.

Another issue that has surfaced is the plea by some to turf out those who have been elected for two or three terms. I can understand the motivation behind this, to help the party present a new, younger, face to the electorate but again I can’t see it happening - not in an election when the party needs all hands on deck.

Then again, the party has the deep financial problems everyone knows about and which the party still refuses to disclose. Nor does it seem that all the problems are historical – some problems like the useful television station are ongoing.

All the polls state, without an exception, the party is heading to yet another defeat. In these circumstances the party should support unstintingly all those, not just the leader, who have offered themselves courageously in the face of a probable heavy defeat.

In 2017 the party campaigned on a largely single issue – corruption. Notwithstanding Joseph Muscat’s enforced resignation, one cannot say corruption is no longer an issue. But maybe the 2017 record defeat came because not so many people agreed that corruption was the be-all and end-all of the issues affecting their lives.

The Labour administration had turned itself, as Labour often does, into a huge clientelar machine. At the end, when they considered their jobs, people closed their noses to the pong of corruption and voted for the party that had brought jobs and a certain prosperity to ordinary people. PN had no counterargument to that.

Then again Labour benefited from the good-will that greets a new administration following a change of government. This will be absent come the next election even if there are some new ministers. Some of the new breed have already had to be moved aside following mistakes they made.

So, there is nothing certain and definitive despite the polls.

Some policymakers prefer to segment the other side and, if possible, win back pocket after pocket on the other side. But others, among whom I dare place myself, prefer to think strategically in terms of issues.

Such an approach would be harder for PN than for Labour which is more flexible and non-confessional than PN.

A careful, blinkers-off study of the data behind the surveys could be highly instructive.

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