After the 2003 election, you had resigned the leadership post. But then you contested for it again, beating John Attard Montalto and Anglu Farrugia, thereby retaining your position. After failing in your mission to keep Malta out of the EU, and admitting defeat by resigning, was it wise to contest for the leadership again in 2003? What made you change your mind between your resignation and decision to contest?

Definitely I had resigned because that was the right thing to do. Meanwhile, for a medical condition I had, I needed to undertake a surgical intervention. It was postponed till after the referendum and election campaigns were over, during which period I stuffed myself with antibiotics to keep going. Even so, as I was recuperating from the surgery, messages kept coming in to say do this, do that.

What jolted me however was a letter that was left late in the evening at my house signed by a number of Labour mayors asking me to stay. I reflected hard on this because it was emerging that the changeover to acceptance of EU membership would be causing deep strains on the party's structures. PN supporters and fellow travellers always believed that I was the prime cause for Labour's stand against EU membership. It was true I strongly disagreed with the option but the fact was that independently of my concerns, there were many others in the party who genuinely believed in this and stood by it. The possibility of a split could not this time be discarded.

That the possibility could become a real problem has always been less than well understood. For instance, some PN-leaning friends have asked me over the years: Would it not have been wiser for Labour to have fully accepted the referendum result and then contested the PN head on in the elections which were soon due anyway and do so with all the best chances of a good victory? I disagreed that this made sense: and there was no parallel here with the referendum that the Borg Olivier administration had carried out over the Independence proposal in 1964. At that time, Labour had also been for Independence, indeed had been its prime mover, only it disagreed with how it was being carried out. In this case, we had opted for a different way forward than what the government had opted for.

That part of Labour which genuinely believed non-membership was the best choice would rebel; and even if this problem was solved, which would have been very difficult  and would have caused disarray, the PN in government would quickly have called a snap election and run the argument that Labour had accepted how right it had been.

So I began to change my mind and believe that I needed to throw my weight as well into the challenge of getting acceptance that the decision on joining the EU was now definite; there would of course be no joy in this task. However if I stood again as leader, I wanted this to be in the context of a serious challenge by candidates; so I encouraged and I meant this seriously, for interested contenders to present themselves and I subsequently made sure that there were no underhand tricks to frustrate their campaign. There was however a very embarrassing complication.

On May Day 2003, at Labour's annual demonstration in Valletta many people carried printed posters calling on me to stay. Obviously some plan had been hatched to organize this. I swear I knew nothing about the matter and would have stopped it immediately had I known.

Alfred Sant, then Opposition Leader, and Lawrence Gonzi, then Prime Minister, taking part on TVM’s Xarabank, with presenter Peppi Azzopardi behind them

As it happened, Malta became an EU member in 2004 with you as Opposition Leader. Malta also adopted the euro currency in 2008, again with the Labour Party saying that the decision was to join the Eurozone at the time was "hasty". Was it a case that the PL, with you as leader, was being perceived as being too negative, an accusation which is today ironically levelled by the Labour Party (now in government) to the PN (now in opposition)?

It can have been the case as you say that the PL with me as leader was being perceived as too "negative". I do not think I can judge about that.

True, Labour did say joining the euro was "hasty". But we also agreed to drop our objections in order not to create political tension over what was going to become our national currency.

Still, I think it should be obvious that joining the euro was too hasty. Other countries that have endowments much bigger than Malta still need to join - like Sweden and Poland. Denmark has a total waiver on ever adopting the euro.

Immediately after we joined, the 2008-2012 financial crisis broke, and Malta was naturally drawn into the desperate efforts to defend the euro at all costs. The currency's management structures at the time were completely unprepared for the turmoil. Luckily by hook or by crook but due to the political commitment that needed to be put into the exercise by all concerned, the euro was salvaged. But ten years after joining the euro zone, as its share in that salvage exercise, Malta had pledged 1.2 billion euros by way of loans, guarantees and other commitments, one of the highest per capita burdens in the euro zone. Meanwhile as part of the running order for the smaller euro member states, Malta is regularly, by statute, not represented with a vote at sittings of the board of governors of the European Central Bank which manages the euro, our national currency.

In another twist, after years of campaigning against EU membership, in 2004 Labour obtained three of the five seats at the European Parliament in the first election ever held. Did you see the electorate as taunting you?

Not at all, to the contrary. The electorate had taken on board the "European dream" peddled to them by the PN because rightly or wrongly, people wished to believe in it. But they also sensed that there was much to keep in mind from Labour's warnings and they wanted have their interests well defended. Deep down, the belief was that Labour would do so strongly while the PN, having delivered their "dream", would soft pedal. You could call this having one's cake and eating it, or having the "best" (if that the right word) of all worlds.

In all the European Parlaiament elections that have been held up to now, the PN has never obtained a majority of the popular vote, relative or absolute.

Alfred sent meeting then Prime Minister of Luxembourg Jean-Claude Juncker

The 2008 election arrived. It was a difficult time for you personally as a few months before you had undergone surgery for a serious medical condition. The Labour Party lost again, by a whisker, a mere 1,500 votes. This time your resignation was irrevocable. Some argue that this defeat for Labour turned out to be a victory as it led to the collapse of the Nationalist Party, a collapse from which the PN is still to recover. Do you agree?

The PN won the 2008 election on the basis of  the power of incumbency, some mistakes made by Labour in the course of the election campaign, my still being in an early convalescence from cancer surgery which limited my endurance and possibly focus, plus an ability - based on establishment omertà and collusion - to stonewall on scandalous issues (e.g. the Mistra affair). There was also the matter of a last minute extension of polling booths, but let's put that aside.

One would have imagined that given the slim margins of support on which it rested,  the new PN administration would be cautious and inclusive in its approach. It did the contrary, being assertive over a number of policy areas (like the Partnership for Peace programme with NATO, re-established without any public debate) and tabling for its take off on the initial stasis nationally on the Labour side while it chose its new leader and he/she established his/her reach.

As the 2008-2012 financial crisis struck, following Malta's hasty adhesion to the euro zone, the Gonzi administration which had been sold as gonzi-PN, needed to follow the austerity policies that were then being decreed from Frankfurt and Brussels. That helped to inflame the internal tensions brewing within the PN. The parliamentary blackmail to which the PN administration was then subject by its own MPs (having a majority of just one MP) did not compare with the Mintoffian melodrama of 1998 but the measures taken to contain it ended up being much more corrosive in the long term for the Nationalist Party, both electorally and in terms of internal party cohesion.

Did all this result from the "photo finish" defeat of Labour in 2008? Perhaps.

Part 1: The 1981 election and the transition from Mintoff to KMB

Part 2: The 1980s’ bulk-buying system and public sector employment

Part 3: The Church schools battle and the 1987 constitutional amendments

Part 4: The post-1987 election years and the rise to the Labour leadership

Part 5: A new image, the anti-Vat position and the Cittadin Mobil

Part 6: The freezing os Malta's EU application and the VAT-CET changeover

Part 7: The clash with Mintoff and the collapse of the government in 1998 

Part 8: The return to the Opposition benches and the EU referendum

Next week: Alfred Sant's years as Member of the European Parliament