This week party members will elect a new PN leader. When Bernard Grech resigned all eyes were on Roberta

Metsola whose status was stellar at the time.

A week is a long time in politics and when Dr Metsola made it clear she was intent on serving out her term as president of the European Parliament, the party started looking inwards.

There were no obvious candidates. Nobody was coming forward to grasp a chalice that has proven to be poisonous to Bernard Grech and his two predecessors, Adrian Delia and Simon Busuttil.

Then Adrian Delia took many by surprise when he threw his hat into the ring and announced his intention to contest the leadership. What was even more surprising is that several of his former adversaries and many of those who had actively undermined Adrian Delia in his first term as PN leader, began to voice their support for his candidature.

The second and only other candidate to express his desire to become a leader of the party was the 29-year-old Alex Borg a member of Parliament for Gozo.

As the leadership campaign progressed it became clear that the thrust of Dr Borg's campaign was aimed at the sons and daughters of the Instagram age. He uses reels and videos very effectively and his messages manage to drum up enthusiasm. This campaign has greatly raised his profile and has made everybody aware of his potential.

Adrian Delia on the other hand conducted a campaign that addressed the concerns of diverse age groups. A couple of his opinion pieces were clearly aimed at showing the 55 to 65 age group that he was sensitive to the problems they were facing and that were being faced by their children and grandchildren.

In other opinion pieces however he displayed a highly developed sense of political direction concerning a broader demographic. He not only examined the problems but provided impressive detail as to how the problems ought to be addressed.

Delia took a bold stance on Gaza in which he called out the Israeli government for behaving like Nazis and he reversed previous antagonism with civil society groups like Repubblika pledging to include them in the new human rights agency he promised to create, if elected to government.

There was never a doubt, throughout this campaign, who was leading the conversation.

In the light of the above therefore, Adrian Delia should be a shoo-in. And yet it is not at all clear that a majority will back his second bid for the leadership.

More than a contest between two politicians, the coming vote is a referendum on Adrian Delia. Can he be entrusted with the top job again or not? Those who decide he cannot be trusted will go with a candidate who, like Bernard Grech and Adrian Delia in 2017, goes from zero experience to leader of the party.

There is no doubt that the wounds and scars of his first term have not been banished from the party's collective conscience. For some it is a source of shame and regret that he was so assailed.

Others feel that his undoing was his own doing. These would vote for anyone else, as leader,  as long as it is not him. But even they acknowledge that he is an excellent MP and would make a formidable member of another leader's cabinet.

Then of course there is the group of voters that feels he has learned and earned. That his re-election would complete the circle of internal reconciliation.  I am in the latter group. Not because Adrian and I have been friends since our teens and have worked together in the lawfirm for twenty years. Indeed, we have been at odds about as frequently as we were of the same mind. But because I think he is the safer pair of hands at this time.

One thing he got right is , clearly, the Vitals case. Note that he was a party to that case not a lawyer. This means that Steward could have sued him personally for damages. Talk about going all in.

Ultimately, it now comes down to whether the man can be trusted to appoint the right front bench, whether he will have a mature and wise team of close advisors and whether he can engender renewed enthusiasm in the younger generation and the female rank and file of the party faithful as well as the all-important floating voters.  

When he was at his lowest ebb, Adrian Delia acted with humility rather than anger. And with parliamentary industriousness rather than bitter indolence. Since being booted out until today, he lost none of his rhetorical ability to hurt Labour and none of his tenacity in doing so. He appears to have lost only the desire to prove that he can go it alone and has made it his mantra to express repentance and to promise unity.

This ought to be more than enough to sway the undecided voter in his favour.