There's a reason why most leaders are of a certain age. Captains of industry, professional men and women who are looked up to by their peers, political figures, all of these have, by and large, one thing in common: experience.

And it is a biological fact that you can only achieve experience with age. Sometimes, age is only relative. In footballing terms, for instance, anyone over 20-odd is ancient, so your captain of England or Italy, to mention but two minor soccer nations, would tend to be quite young by normal standards but actually relatively older in football terms. That's assuming, of course, that the manager hasn't taken leave of his senses and appointed some tearaway like Rooney to lead the team.

Don't get me wrong, you don't have to be of advanced years to be a worthy member of society: there are plenty of young Turks who generate wealth and well-being for themselves and people around them, who are genii in their fields.

But are they leaders? Not really, you'd have to admit, for all that, for various reasons, they command or buy a following.

Of course, youths all over will be giving a resounding raspberry at this stage, pointing out that I'm taking this position because I'm well past it and jealous of their youth, vigour and vim. I'm not that old that I can't remember the way I used to strut the stage myself, imaging that I was the dog's whiskers, the bee's knees and the very acme of professionalism.

I look back on that time of my life with not a little amusement and some blushes. As you get on in years (listen to the doddering old fool) you start realising that no, you don't know it all. In fact, you know very much less than you thought you did and what you do know isn't all there is to know, by a very long chalk. The lucky thing is that age and guile will trump youth and brashness every time, so you can still have some fun with the energetic brats who are snapping at your heels.

Which gets me, by way of a pretty long introduction, to wondering why so many people adulate Joseph Muscat in the way they do. Looking at some of the adoring tracts written about him, at the way Super One dedicates so many hours of broadcasting to him (apparently, on Monday, he was on screen, what with his press conference and Bondi+ and his speech on the budget, almost all evening) you'd think that this was the second coming of Churchill and Kennedy rolled into one.

The truth is quite short of that, and then some. What we have here is a young, inexperienced, public policy graduate (post-graduate as well, to be fair) who has managed nothing more than himself for most of the time, finding himself elected to lead the second largest party in the country and, to boot, fulfil the constitutional role of Leader of the Opposition.

Worrying? Too right it is: youthful enthusiasm is all very well in its place, but do you really want someone who doesn't have the nous to know that he's out of his depth trying to keep up with the big kids? People like this take reckless risks, quite apart from wanting to be loved all the time and having to play to the gallery in order to try to attract what they imagine are the admiring glances of the grown-ups.

Conceivably, if the lad was flanked by men and women of substance, he'd be able to hack it, but what we've got here are wing-men of less than awe-inspiring political quality.

One is an ex-gamekeeper turned poacher who has little experience outside of policing, and this during an era when the force wasn't exactly looked on with undying devotion, while the other is a sufferer from an extreme and virulent form of logorrhoea who seems to have contracted an equally virulent dose of DCGitis, which might make him an amusing enough conversation piece but hardly qualifies him to form part of the alternative policy-making machine that the Opposition should be.

Given this ensemble, and I've not made mention of the other stars in Labour's galaxy, it's hardly astounding that apart from whinging and smug parading, there's not much to worry the government in this lot.

Just to keep up tradition, I'll mention that I had a darn decent lunch at Ambrosia last week, in the company of a couple of guys who work in Luxembourg as translators for the court. I tell you, if I were a few years younger, I'd think about that sort of job - from what I remember of the Duchy, it's a pretty good place to hang out, conveniently sited, as it is, in the centre of Europe.

I'll close, with your permission (or not) with a piece of blatant familial promotion: trot along and have a look at the missus' exhibition at Gallery G in Lija - since I have had absolutely nothing to do with it, I can say it's pretty good, though admittedly I'm biased.

imbocca@gmail.com, http://www.timesofmalta.com/blogs