Back in the days when I was still kind of young, there were few things more repulsive than the sight of a Ford Escort Mark I cruising down a street. They were often red in colour, distastefully fixed up, with tinted windows and Playboy seat covers, and loud, very loud.

And when the driver swaggered out of the car, music blaring, his face defiant, he looked like a breed apart, almost an alien, and very often Labour. When in those golden years of Labour we thought things couldn’t get worse, out came Ford Escort Mark II, and they were worse than their predecessors. Those cars held cult status for some, while others would not be seen dead in them. But that is Malta, a culturally divided, irreconcilable society.

Today, Mark I Mintoff is gone but we have Joseph Muscat and it looks like we are in for many more golden years of Labour, Mintoff Mark II.

Muscat started off the election campaign playing the underdog card. It hardly looked like that. With the PN in financial woes, the island became infested with illegal billboards carrying adverts by the government and Labour, adverts so alike you couldn’t tell one from the other. But that is Labour for you, shameless and rich.

Then, in typical socialist fashion, the goodies started rolling out: a wage top-up for minimum wage earners; maternity leave to be financed by employers; VAT refund cheques in car registration; a 2c cut in petrol price; letters to all households signed by the energy minister telling them of imminent cuts in energy bills, but not the bills; cheaper medicine prices; the recruitment of cleaners from the Cottonera area with the public sector; and even a promise of a wage rise to former dockyard workers employed with IPSL on the last day of the election campaign. It was blatantly Labour and it worked.

As the campaign progressed, Muscat got cockier. From underdog he moved on to ask voters to use the EP election as a verdict on his government. From being “ready to be judged” he moved on to “relishing the challenge” and, finally, ended up calling the election a personal contest between him and Opposition leader Simon Busuttil, taunting him to “bring it on”.

Now that the election glitter is over, the time of reckoning must begin.

There are issues that the government needs to confront. Now, the true Labour government shall begin.

There is no longer any room to dodge the publication of the government’s contract with Henley & Partners once requested to do so by the Public Accounts Committee.

We shall hopefully learn the truth of what is inside that shameful contract between a sovereign State increasingly resembling a South American banana republic and an international company out to milk our European passports.

The contract with Electrogas will also need to be published, although the key point is already out. The €30 million that were meant to be paid in advance and which would have gone to cover the cost of the premature tariff cuts will be staggered and not paid in a lump sum. I suppose the energy minister omitted saying this in his letter to all households, that the cuts resulting from a power station not even built were just an electoral gimmick.

There are other reality checks on the horizon. Economic indicators are not as good as the government has tried to make it sound. The take up of commercial loans is down, there are significant losses in both exports and imports and unemployment is slowly but steadily rising.

Muscat is deficiently unable to handle any of these issues with the seriousness and maturity they deserve. But we are stuck with him because a good majority actually think he can pull it through.

Muscat has promised that the best is yet to come and anyone with any recollection of Labour governments past knows that is a bad omen.

Whichever way you look at it, this is like Labour’s second term in office. The honeymoon is over and the tough real business of government will now begin.

It was a strategic mistake on Muscat’s part to turn the EP election into a contest between him and Busuttil. He has unwittingly saved the PN four more years in the wilderness that would have led to an inevitable defeat at the general election, given how much off the mark the PN has been so far.

This serf population has let down its youths by inflicting upon them this terrible plague called Labour

This terrible defeat for the PN will lead to some much needed soul searching and possibly a radical review of its political platform, something that would have otherwise taken place in four years’ time. This is a gift to the PN that Muscat may come to regret.

Speaking in Fgura during the election campaign, Muscat promised a major overhaul of the health sector and ominously added that the reform he had in mind would be similar to that done at Enemalta.

Like his predecessor Mintoff, Muscat likes to speak in riddles and to treat people as if they were serfs, releasing information in only small doses. He loves to keep us guessing as to what he has in store for us. In truth, such statements only instil dread.

Labour’s track record in the health sector is abysmal. Mintoff Mark I attempted an overhaul of the health system in 1977 and the end result of that was the longest industrial dispute in Maltese history, a 10-year doctors’ strike.

The problem then appeared to be a shortage of junior medical staff in the hospital. In his crass way of doing things, Mintoff decided to introduce a compulsory two-year pre-registration period for all new graduates to ensure adequate hospital staff. The move threatened graduates’ aspirations to further their studies abroad, most especially in the UK. Failing to comply with the new regulations would have meant professional exile for any graduate.

Concurrently, the new law also transferred the prerogative of the licensing of foreign doctors from the Medical Council of Malta to the Health Minister. Mintoff had his strike-breakers ready and they came from authoritarian east European countries, his friends.

The doctors’ union called partial industrial action at the hospital and the government, which so much wanted to see the hospital wards properly staffed with doctors, locked the doctors out and they stayed out. That’s how Labour implements its reforms.

Medical School professors were also dismissed, which effectively meant that the school could not function in October 1977. Medical students, faced with the prospect of having to finish their studies abroad, did the unthinkable. Twenty of them went to Castille, chained themselves to the railings with padlocks and carried placards that read: “I want to study in Malta.” Busloads of students arrived to support them.

The reaction was predictable. The police moved in, accompanied by Labour thugs. Students were beaten, thrown into police vans and some were hospitalised.

It is hardly likely that that would happen again today. If those 20 heroes were to chain themselves again at Castille, the odds are that the Prime Minister, surrounded by a troupe of cameras, will walk majestically down the steps and greet them with that cynical grin that’s become his trademark.

They will not be beaten, they will just be mocked but the end result will be the same. This is the sort government to expect now. This is the sort of reform we are to expect in the health sector.

The EP election may have been an opportunity to check the excesses of this government, although even an outright defeat for Labour would probably not have been enough to stop the arrogance we are in for now. In fact, the electorate did the opposite and now they will see what they will get: what they deserve.

Blinded by ceaseless propaganda, this serf population has let down its youths by inflicting upon them this terrible plague called Labour with greater force than before. Ironically, it is now up to those same youths, like those brave 20 at Castille, who will one day come forward to save the day and face up to the Labour thugs, in their various forms.

I hope they will forgive us for doing this to them.