It is rather bizarre that the Labour government felt the need to issue a statement yesterday week to announce that, as part of the ongoing Yorgen Fenech trial, jurors had been taken to an office at the Office of the Prime Minister in Castille.

Castille was the last stop of a two-day visit by jurors to places which they had been hearing about for weeks.

So why did the government feel the need to issue the statement?

It looked like an attempt by Prime Minister Robert Abela to distance himself from the administration of Joseph Muscat, whose government was in office when the events being examined by the jury took place.

The wording was particularly revealing. The OPM went out of its way to say that the government was "completely extraneous" to the facts being discussed in the trial, while emphasising that it had experienced no difficulty in offering its full cooperation.

That is an odd thing to have to say.

The government had no choice but to cooperate. The OPM could hardly refuse to open its doors to the court, nor could it reasonably create obstacles to a visit by the jurors. Had it done so, it would have raised far more serious questions about its attitude towards the proceedings.

Presenting this as evidence of the government's willingness to cooperate is therefore unnecessary. It is also beside the point.

The bigger story is that, for the first time, a jury trying a case related to a murder has been taken inside the OPM at Castille to inspect a location connected to evidence being heard in court. That is significant in itself.

The murder being examined is that of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, whose assassination in 2017 became one of the darkest episodes in Malta's recent history. The public inquiry subsequently concluded that the State was responsible for creating a culture of impunity in which the assassination became possible.

Against that background, the government's insistence that it is completely extraneous to what is being discussed in court inevitably sounds political.

The message appears to be: it was not us, it was Joseph.

Abela has been trying to create this distance for years. He has never quite put it in those blunt terms, because Muscat remains an important figure within the Labour movement and continues to command loyalty among many Labour supporters. But the attempts at separation have been visible.

Abela benefited politically from appearing close to Muscat when he was seeking the Labour leadership. But once he became Prime Minister, the relationship changed. Muscat's legacy became increasingly difficult to carry.

The hospitals concession is one example. The grey-listing episode was another burden that fell on Abela's government, even though its roots lay in developments that took place under Muscat. Then there was Konrad Mizzi, once one of Muscat's most prominent ministers and political protégés, who was eventually removed from the Labour parliamentary group under Abela.

Each episode served, in its own way, to establish distance.

This latest statement was another example, and perhaps a more revealing one because of the setting and circumstances.

Abela's government is still being embarrassed by matters originating in the Muscat years. The problem is that Muscat has not disappeared from Labour's political landscape. To Labourites, he remains more popular than Abela. This makes a complete repudiation of Muscat politically difficult.

Yet the burden remains.

The trial has repeatedly brought the Muscat years back into public discussion. Abela cannot control what witnesses say, what evidence is produced, or what the jury is shown. Nor can he prevent the public from drawing its own conclusions from what is being said in court.

This is why the latest statement is so revealing. It suggests Abela's irritation at having to continue carrying a political liability created by his predecessor.

The early election must also be viewed in this context. Abela said the decision was prompted by the international situation. That was his stated explanation. But it is difficult to ignore the political damage being caused to Labour by a trial that continues to expose aspects of the Muscat years. Waiting longer would have meant allowing the proceedings to dominate the political conversation and potentially causing further damage to Labour's electoral prospects.

The irony is that, while Abela wants to distance himself from Muscat, Muscat remains intrinsically involved in the political consequences of what is happening in court.

The Prime Minister has already sought to protect Labour from that legacy by calling an early election. Now his government appears to be trying to extricate itself from it by stressing that it is "extraneous" to the facts being examined by the jury.

But Labour cannot have it both ways.

It cannot claim the political inheritance of the Muscat years when it is convenient and then disown it when it becomes embarrassing. It cannot expect people to forget that this is the same Labour Party, and that some members of Abela's Cabinet also served under Muscat.

Abela may want to put distance between himself and his predecessor. That statement suggests that he increasingly feels the need to do so.

But the past cannot simply be declared irrelevant. And no statement from Castille can change the fact that, nearly seven years on, the Muscat legacy is still casting a long shadow over Robert Abela's government.