It has now been over 12 years since the Labour Party emerged from the Naxxar Counting Hall with what until then was the largest electoral mandate in Malta's post-Independence history, wresting control of the government from a Nationalist Party dynasty that had been in power for the better part of 25 years.

Since then voters have punished the PN time and time and time again, chewing up and spitting out three distinctly different party leaders: 12 years of losses, 12 years of reckoning, 12 years of new beginnings becoming mere false starts.

A tale of three leaders: Gonzi's natural successor

In many ways the party's woes trace back to when it was last in government. Winning the 2008 election by a hairline majority and everything that followed after set the stage for the PL's landslide victory five years later.

Perhaps the scale of the defeat was a surprise for the PN, but the end outcome was by all accounts expected. But despite having gone through three different party leaders, the party has not recovered.

First, the party elected Simon Busuttil: a politician who came into local politics having built a sturdy reputation in Brussels. He was in many ways seen as the natural successor to Lawrence Gonzi - after all, he had already been elected as the party's deputy leader in 2012.

Busuttil's leadership was continuity for the PN. He was flanked by Mario De Marco and Beppe Fenech Adami as deputy leaders - both politicians hailing from some of the most important political families in Malta's post-Independence history, whose surnames are synonymous with the PN.

More so, much like Gonzi's administration had floundered on the thorny topic of divorce, Busuttil's PN also floundered when it abstained from voting on civil unions for same-sex partners - thereby reinforcing the belief that when it came to civil liberties, the PN was not the party for you.

Busuttil's PN lost the 2014 MEP elections by a margin pretty much identical to the general election a year prior and there was no indication in opinion polls in the months and years that followed that the party was gaining any sort of ground on the Labour Party.

Then an opportunity presented itself, as high-up members of the Labour administration were named in the Panama Papers - shaking the party to its core and allowing Busuttil to mobilise a core of party supporters in protest. Yet, the results didn't come.

Busuttil's counterpart, Joseph Muscat, called a snap election, and opinion polls placed his PL consistently ahead of the PN - even if PN insiders felt that the party had a shot at an unlikely comeback victory.

There was to be no comeback: the PL emerged victorious, again by just over 35,000 votes - or even 40,000 votes, when one excludes the votes collected by PD candidates who were on the ballot sheet under the PN's name.

Busuttil - the man in many ways seen as the next natural successor to Lawrence Gonzi - resigned soon after, having barely even made a dent in the PL's electoral majority.

A tale of three leaders: The anti-establishment figure

The pressing question for the party was who would take over. For the first time ever, the party leader was to be chosen not by the party councillors alone - but by the party members themselves.

An open contest ensued: veteran Gozitan MP Chris Said and long-time party administrator Alex Perici Calascione threw their hat in the ring, but so did lawyer Adrian Delia - someone touted as a frontrunner on the basis that he was "detached" from the PN's past and a total newcomer to the political scene.

The idea was appealing: Delia had never been involved in local politics, he was detached from the "establishment" that had run the PN for decades prior. He was a well-known figure particularly owing to his involvement in local sports, and he was a strong orator and an even better debater.

Delia was the most popular candidate among party councillors out of the four who contested (Frank Portelli being the fourth candidate), thereby setting up a final vote against Said. Delia won with a 52.7% majority among the party members.

Yet the party itself never really accepted Delia as leader. He moved the party into a more conservative direction, prompting criticism from parts of the party who believed that the PN had to moderate its stance on progressive issues in order to attract middle of the road voters, rather than harshen it.

But more so, Delia was also subject to stinging criticism from Daphne Caruana Galizia, and he riled her dedicated followers by once referring to her as a "biċċa blogger". Caruana Galizia was brutally assassinated shortly after Delia was elected leader with peace never having been made.

Meanwhile, opinion polls never indicated any wave of change in the PN's favour - despite Caruana Galizia's assassination and the PL government continuing to paddle itself into a myriad of scandals.

The 2019 MEP election, which the PN contested with an anti-immigration and anti-abortion stance - even though the European Parliament cannot actually impose abortion on any country, backed that up: the PN lost that election by over 42,000 votes and lost a seat in Brussels.

Delia's campaign against the government's hospitals' deal - one he was ultimately vindicated for - did not excite voters, and when mass protests erupted against the government in relation to arrests in the Caruana Galizia murder some months after the European elections, it was civil society at the fore rather than the PN.

Indeed, protestors gathered in their thousands outside Parliament during those December nights had almost as many boos for Delia as they did for members of the Labour administration.

Delia continued to flounder in the polls, with some raising the spectre that should things continue as they were, the PL might win the next general election by a two-thirds majority - and while he was insistent on fighting on, those in his party were less so, and took matters into their own hands to oust him as leader.

A tale of three leaders: the peacemaker

The ousting of Delia by those within almost destroyed the PN. The first experiment of a party leader elected by its members had been curtailed after just three years.

The situation left a PN in tatters: a party bitterly divided between those who supported Delia and those who did not. It further strengthened the perception that there was a faction - an "establishment" - within the PN that felt it had a divine right to run the show.

Bernard Grech was seen, in some ways, not to be too different from Delia: like the beleaguered PN leader he was a lawyer, had no previous involvement in local politics and was a good debater. He was seen as more approachable and as more capable of being communicative with the average voter than previous PN leaders were.

Party members gave Grech their backing with almost 70% of their vote, compared to slightly over 30% for Delia. But Grech's first job was to prevent the party, he had just been elected to lead, from imploding.

He moved to unite the party: while Delia had shunned Busuttil, Grech gave his predecessor a more prominent role on the Opposition's frontbenches. With time, the wounds - at least on the surface - started to heal.

The 2022 general election was perhaps a touch too close for Grech to have any hope of making a tangible impact, particularly as the country emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic which the government had handled pretty well.

Yet after that, the PN found some energy and momentum: the hospitals' case that Delia had started resulted in the rescinding of the concession and the government found itself battling a cost of living crisis and other problems of its own making such as overcrowding.

For the first time, the party was gaining ground - and it showed; the PN outperformed the polls in the 2024 European Parliament election and cut the vote gap down to 8,000 votes. It was a result that shocked the PL into a full-blown reform process, and galvanised Grech and the PN leadership.

But fast forward nine months, the PN is now once again rudderless: any momentum has dissipated, Grech has tendered his resignation amid rock bottom trust ratings. What was meant to be the real moment of truth for the PN turned out to be yet another false start.

How did it come to this? There are plenty of factors. Even as the PN led the polls in September 2024, Grech remained far less trusted by the electorate than his counterpart Robert Abela. The cost of living issues were controlled, the furore over the hospitals' case died down, and the PN essentially failed to capitalise on the government's mistakes.

Meanwhile, the PL responded to the electoral shock in a way that the PN simply could not and still has not: it identified its biggest challenges, and realised that it needed to change. Every single top role within the party's administration - except that of leader - was filled with a new face.

It's the type of decisive action that the PN has been unable to take for 12 whole years. So while the Labour Party has gone through its own moments of pain, the party has consistently emerged from it without losing support. The PN on the other hand, is again back to square one.