The Nationalist Party is this morning launching its new billboard “Labour won’t work”.

The billboard shows a long line of people queuing behind a stand saying Register for the Unemployed.

PN President Marthese Portelli said this was a billboard that had been used during an electoral campaign in the UK 30 years ago and the PN had opted to use it because 30 years back was where the PL would take Malta.

Finance Minister Tonio Fenech said the billboard reflected how the Nationalist government had created 20,000 jobs in the past four years and had one of the lowest levels of unemployment while the Labour Party had a track record in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as between 1996 and 1998, of creating unemployment.

Labour's policies, the minister siad, were not conducive to creating jobs, but rather the opposite.

Asked whether the PN' strategy was going to be one of comparions to the 1970s and 1980s, Justice Minister Chris Said said "it is our duty to compare".

In its reply, Labour posted a list of facts that took place 33 years ago when an uncannily similar billboard was used by the Conservatives in the UK.

The PL statement read: "33 years ago: Ayatollah Khomeini returns to Iran; Saddam becomes President of Iraq; The Walkman is the latest gadget; Village People come up with a new song - YMCA; Trivial Pursuit hits the stands; Superman is the latest special effects movie; Little House on the Prairie was a hit show; GonziPN’s copycat billboard is created

"GonziPN is stuck in the past."