That's entertainment?

He may be yesterday's man rather than tomorrow's torch. Still, Dom Mintoff's wheeze on Smash TV was - for some at least - a bit of a hit. I encountered young as well as quite senior people who found it all rather entertaining. Some staunch Labourites I talked to were impressed by the ex-leader's knowledge of history. Others found the peroration far too boring.

I was firmly in the latter category, rather cruelly symbolised by the drooping faces of the young journalists packed in the tiny studio. I felt a sadness over the forgettable moment. Perhaps it was because at times I zapped into the Sports Channel (Fulham were playing Chelsea), but I found flitting through by subconscious ancient memories of the time when as a young lad I used to read about boxing, from its earlier heroes like John L. Sullivan and Gentleman Jim Corbett to possibly the greatest of them all, Joe Louis, the Brown Bomber.

Louis was one of the immortal world heavyweight champions. He retired in glory. Then dire necessity forced him to return to the ring. I recall feeling unutterably sad when I read of his encounter with a young upcoming boxer, one Cassius Clay, who made mincemeat of the old man. Worse still, later on, the one-time all-time great Joe Louis turned to wrestling. It was not pretty to watch, certainly not entertaining. Perhaps my sadness was misplaced.

Mr Mintoff - whom I never got on with but have always respected for the way he put spine in the back of people imprisoned in the false consciousness of dependence on a colonial power, and for giving the poor sustenance, faith and hope with social policies that are today taken for granted but where inexistent not that many years back - has never retired from the arena of his choice.

He no longer sits in Parliament, not since 1998. But neither does he sit on his hands. He recalls all that he has been through. He broods heavily over the mark of a traitor Alfred Sant seared on his forehead. He stays in touch with all that goes on around him, with old contacts abroad, with ambassadors and high commissioners who feel a need to know what he thinks, what he may be cooking.

Shunned by his own party he may be, but he has his admirers too. The wife of a high-ranking diplomat took me to task, of all people, for the way she felt the fallen idol had been cast aside after he moved from the turbulent summer of 1998 into what she felt was the winter of his discontent. There are rank-and-file Labourites who, though they cannot forgive him for voting against the Labour government that summer, still talk wistfully of what attracted them to him through the decades he looked down from his pedestal, suggesting that something is missing in today's set-up.

The man's cunning and restless manoeuvres may be entertaining enough in themselves. His recent return to the ring through Smash TV on Monday was anything but that, though analogy with Joe Louis would be too wretched and anyway not quite applicable. For a man who admits to no political mistake except anointing Dr Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici as his political heir and successor, he now has to include in his personal scrapbook a very odd cutting.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici, so reviled through the years by the Master who made and unmade him, last week went on triumphant record as having set about drawing Mr Mintoff into the open to somehow oppose what is going on regarding Malta and the EU. In summary (I read it in The Malta Independent) he said that, whether few or many, there are still those who take note of what Dom Mintoff says or does, and his silence could be interpreted as backing for EU membership. Dr Mifsud Bonnici, fundamentally opposed to whatever the EU stands for, therefore used his guile to lure his predecessor out of his apparent shell.

It matters not to him that in the process he humiliated himself, that he cut a pathetic presence twiddling his thumbs beside Mr Mintoff on Smash TV, good only to read out a statement, and then at the odd bidding of the restored Master before he monopolised the proceedings, repeat bits of it as if he had not been clear enough in the way he had said them. The crucial thing for him is that, by reverting to the old, old role of kowtowing to his wishes, he did draw Mintoff out to pour scorn on various aspects of the EU, and so to discourage support for membership.

Mr Mintoff, needless to say, would dismiss that interpretation. A young old man of 86, set in his ways since he was eight, six, or even earlier, he would never admit that he was blatantly used. Rather he must believe that he on his part was using the man who did his bidding so faithfully in the past, including acting as a messenger to tell members of the 1981-83 Cabinet (of which I was one) that they were being shuffled (and one shunted off) by the boss. That is political symbiosis, that is. The old crocodile did not mind being paraded out on show so long as he could show his threatening teeth, the submissive bird fluttering around him dutifully to clean them.

Nor, apparently, did Mr Mintoff mind that it was being put out that he had been cautioned not to as much as jab at the current Labour leader, his nemesis who had dared metamorphose him from Saviour to Traitor in his Birgu Wharf speech of 1998. He did not mind because his mind was clearly set on how he would go about doing exactly what he was determined to do. The show was not truly about any plan to make Malta rise out of its deep slumber, throw its head back and walk serenely into the beckoning future. There was patently no plan.

Neutrality remains a totally valid concept, in the sense that we should never be a military base again, and that we should be pro-active in a determined peace process, rather than following blindly the paths others map out, unless that be in the Security Council of the UN. But neutrality can no longer be used as part of any plan to bargain contributions out of the EU or others, even if they do declare their preparedness to help us in case of aggression.

Nor is it any sort of plan to say that we have a massive debt burden and that it is the burden of the EU as well and the union should relieve us of it. It is not even as if Malta's public debt consists mostly of loans from foreigners, including the EU, and that we can join the clamour for debt relief of the less fortunate countries of the world. The bulk of our public debt is domestic.

It is no new plan to suggest never-say-never by putting forward the idea that we join the EU in those bits of it that we agree with.

Mr Mintoff's real plan was clearly to make two personal statements. First, that he stands by his version of his contribution to history. He knows well enough that he has to do that. Today's Labour Party makes scant reference to Labour's past achievements. The Mintoff era is left to the Nationalists to recall, and needless to say they only recall the bad parts of it. The good parts are deliberately rubbed off. Few Labour spokespersons bother to run against the wind that has seen the idol of that era fall so conspicuously.

Dom Mintoff's soliloquy was not the rambling of an aging man. He knew exactly what he wanted to do and how to go about it. It was bad television - that was never his medium, not even in his heyday, with his long build-ups. But so what? Mr Mintoff used the host of the show as a foil - he addressed him rather than the camera in the silly thrust-at-them style of modern political practitioners, thereby avoiding vacuousness. He dismissed the moderator's few attempts to intervene with careful courtesy. He fobbed off the restless, yawning journalists, even telling one of them one must not take up too much time, must one?

He had his mind set and he set on about it. He did it his way. That also applied to the second part of his personal plan. Having set out his version of history - as all leaders tend to do when they are no longer on stage: just look at Bill Clinton who regularly spices his public talks with what he did for the world when in office - he set about attacking the epilogue written by Alfred Sant to his drama, once again choosing the bow and arrows as his weapon. It may not have been as extensive an onslaught as the steady arrowing of St Sebastian tied to a tree. But Dom the Archer kept the barbs flying in the air with the determination of a Hiawatha, who could not be bested on the number of arrows he fired into the air before the first one had landed.

He wanted to demonstrate, he made it clear, who truly had the interest of Malta at heart. He would have gone on Labour's TV station but "he" (Sant) had not invited him. He would still go and there, though now he did not at all require that station to spread the word. There would not need be any talk of why he (Sant) had called him (Mintoff) traitor. Something, by the way, which - Mr Mintoff put it with clear contempt - he (Sant, who else) was now claiming he had not really uttered. With contempt, yes, but craftily too - Mr Mintoff was suggesting to the world that Dr Sant may have tried to massage and assuage him by claiming that he had not really called him, or meant to call him "traitor".

The rest was mish-mash. Parts of it struck a chord - visiting warships are not the kind of vessels the government should welcome in our harbours. Others were out of synch. But again, so what? Dom Mintoff had had his hour. He had had his fun. He even found the time and space to offer a gross example of cheek.

On being reminded that Salvu Sammut, who happens to be the president of the GWU, had a few days earlier cast doubt on Mr Mintoff's motives for his return to the political arena, he glibly dismissed Mr Sammut as being one solitary voice speaking only for himself. As if Dom Mintoff could claim that he, for that matter, was at that moment in time speaking for anybody else.

That did not really matter - he had put forward his essential two points: his place in history, and his abiding scorn for the present Labour leader. He had grabbed another couple of headlines. He lives to concoct another fray.

No, not really entertaining. Only more or less as expected.