Former PL MP Silvio Grixti lambasted members of the Labour Party parliamentary group who are “detached from the electorate” and care more for their personal interests than the politics of service, laying the blame for a weak survey result at their feet.

A MaltaToday survey on Sunday resulted that voting intentions favour the PL at 48.7%, followed by the PN at 46.1%, then the ADPD with 4.1%, and Momentum coming in with 1.2%. The gap between the PL and PN was calculated to be of around 7,600 votes – narrowing slightly since the last survey, despite the Budget having been announced between the two surveys.

Grixti, a medical doctor by profession, served as a Labour Party MP between 2017 and 2021, but was pushed to resign after he was charged with a social benefits racket.  He is pleading not guilty to those charges.

He became the second politician to sound the alarm on the survey results published by MaltaToday, after PL backbencher and former minister Edward Zammit Lewis said that to see such a result "after such a good budget" and not be worried would mean that you have to either be politically clueless or not a labourite.

He commented that the PL must stop annoying people with its stubbornness on particular issues where it is "crystal clear" that people are against the PL's position.

Grixti meanwhile said that the survey result was down to “inefficient people who are obsessed with their personal interest and district conflicts with other candidates, rather than the collective interest of the party and the Labourite.”

Grixti further criticised these MPs, noting that they seemed pleased as long as they took pictures with fireworks, feast statues, and while on Parliamentary duty abroad.

“People detached from the electorate, with personal interest in megalomania who are not capable to politically shoulder anything,” he said.

Grixti said that the party’s executive and Cabinet need to follow the example of Prime Minister Robert Abela and Deputy Prime Minister Ian Borg “who seek out and meet people every day with humility and servile political determination.”

He said that politics is felt and showed by listening, serving, being humble, and helping to solve issues, not to take those who come begging to you for a ride. “But as long as we have the blazer, handbag, driver, and car…”

He continued that the truth is that there is no constant contact or empathy, especially with those who are most vulnerable, and with those who have been labourites since the womb. “Now they are surrounded by insensitive people who do not have the palpable pulse of the people.”

“We have a lot of people who do not know what it means to be in Opposition and who found every ready for them, want to humiliate those who came before them, get paid high wages, and feel comfortable spitting into the sky so now it’s all falling onto the party’s face,” Grixti said.

“That’s what happens when you have candidates who are cut off from the people; people who made it to Parliament without having to knock a door,” he said.

Grixti said that the party needs a serious post-mortem.

“To love the Labour Party you first have to be a Labourite, not vice-versa,” he concluded.