There are many reasons not to believe that what the Labour Party is proposing for the generation of electricity in Malta is achievable in the real world. For the sake of argument, I will take Labour’s proposals as given.

This is Mintoffian economics not unlike bulk buying and import substitution schemes from the 1980s- Emanuel Delia

They can persuade a private investor to build a power plant on flimsy ground, next to massive gas tanks without testing them for safety, supplied by conjured supply ships that do not yet exist, charging for 10 years less than what it costs them to produce electricity, without cover from market fluctuations in the price of the raw material, exposed to the risks and liabilities of the whole thing blowing up within swimming distance of a town, having paid an upfront €30 million cheque for the privilege and all rolled out within less time than it takes most people to build a washroom on their roof.

Let us assume that 25 years of almost uninterrupted opposition have given Labour miraculous faculties and all this can be achieved.

If you believe all this, the next question is: ought this to be done?

Labour is speaking in terms of a 10-year gas supply deal from a contractor granted exclusive control on 40 per cent of our energy supply for 25 years.

Quite apart from the fact that the contractor is not supplying gas, but electricity, this fact alone should raise the alarm bells.

Labour claims it need not go for tender for such a contract since electricity generation is an open market. An open market it is but Labour is proposing to close it. It is proposing to give a private operator exclusive access to 40 per cent of our energy needs without any control on the price it sets for the privilege.

I am all for market access and private enterprise but this is neither. This is Mintoffian economics not unlike bulk buying and import substitution schemes from the 1980s where an ‘entrepreneur’ chosen in a smoked-filled room at Labour HQ is given protected and exclusive access to the Maltese domestic market preventing choice, stifling quality and giving a free hand to pricing abuse.

Quite apart from the discussion on whether Labour will need to go for a transparent tender process, the real issue here is whether Labour ought to avoid it. I have heard Labour MPs cry blue murder in Parliament that some public agency or other spent a few hundred euros on paper clips without resorting to tender.

And here they are solemnly undertaking to choose the guy who will be free to decide how much you and your children will be paying for electricity out of your earnings 10, 20, even 25 years from now within 100 days of their election.

This without so much as a notice in the gazette, a closed envelope and a sealed tender box, an independent selection board and a chance for appeal by someone who can, at least, undertake to charge us less 15 or 25 years from now.

Labour also speaks of faceless ‘entrepreneurs’ who have told them they would be willing to sign up for the deal. This I am almost prepared to believe.

Someone seems to have worked out that it makes business sense to enter into an exclusive contract with Malta to sell it 40 per cent of its growing energy needs for the next 25 years, charging local consumers something slightly less than market prices for the first 10 years and charging whatever they may fancy for 15 years after that.

That way they recover their initial investment (wasteful and pointless as it seems to be), the upfront ‘gifts’ they have to pay – as Labour itself described them, if you please – charging any price, safe in the knowledge that Maltese consumers cannot resort to any other supplier for 40 per cent of their energy needs and immune from any political pressures on any state-owned energy supplier to keep prices as low as possible.

For who would otherwise build 30 storey-high gas tanks and three bespoke supply ships while hearing Labour say they will go ahead with a gas pipeline with Sicily anyway? The tanks and the ships will become redundant within six years of a 25-year deal, much, much earlier than their payback period. And, yet, this ‘entrepreneur’ will be safe in the knowledge that whatever the cost of that pipeline, Enemalta will not be able to use it for any more than 60 per cent of its energy needs even if it would cost it 30 per cent less to consume the gas pumped through it than the price charged by Labour’s new-found friends.

This is dangerous. Would you open a factory or a hotel in Malta if you knew that in 10 years time you would not be able to either lobby a government that owned a state-owned energy supplier nor resort to electricity in the free market to find cheaper electricity?

If you believed Labour, you would not trust them. Quicker ain’t necessarily better.