As Libya was burning, our Prime Minister was in the UK planning the next Commonwealth summit in Malta, laying out his grandiose plans to flog life into a moribund organisation.

He didn’t cut his visit short when it emerged that a Maltese national had been abducted in Libya. He had left the country in good hands. His wife appears to have stayed behind this time around and was recently spotted distributing funds to animal sanctuaries in her capacity as, well, the Prime Minister’s wife. So, no worries, Joe, a safe pair of hands, just like Gonzi’s.

Then, hidden away in a Department of Information release, Joseph Muscat unveiled part of his agenda for the 2015 summit. He told the Royal Commonwealth Society that he wanted the Commonwealth to be more relevant and honest with the populations of the countries it represented. As an example of how this could happen, he mentioned civil unions between same sex couples and LGBT rights. He wants to champion gay rights in the Commonwealth.

It takes a Labour leader to keep a straight face when saying this. The Commonwealth will meet in Malta next year only because Mauritius has pulled out, and the reason it gave was the human rights situation in Sri Lanka, the country that hosted the last meeting. Our Prime Minister had no qualms about human rights abuses in Sri Lanka and gladly volunteered to host the summit himself. Now he wants to preach to the Commonwealth on civil rights.

The irony does not stop there. In 42 of the 53 Commonwealth countries, homosexuality is criminalised in some way.

According to the Peter Tatchell Foundation, a human rights organisation, homosexuality carries penalities of up to life imprisonment in at least seven Commonwealth countries, the death penalty in parts of northern Nigeria and rural Pakistan, while Brunei is planning to introduce death by stoning.

Next year, Muscat will be telling these countries that they should stop throwing their gays into prison and allow them to marry instead. If they so wished to emulate Malta, they could let them adopt children too. Muscat had better keep away from the subject of black rights in liberal Malta, however, there can be choppy waters there.

Some Commonwealth countries might push back hard.

Clearly flushed with his local popularity, our Prime Minister must be living in cloud cuckoo land to come up with something like this. And we can only dread what he may come up with when Malta takes over the EU presidency.

Surrealism in Labour’s foreign policy is nothing new. Back in the early 1980s, when it was Malta’s turn to burn under Labour’s Golden Years, Labour’s slogan for that shameful legislature was ‘Peace and Progress’. It was a mantra repeated most especially by then Prime Minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici. Like Muscat, Mifsud Bonnici was oblivious to the reality around him and, as Malta buckled under his repressive regime, he promoted the island as a neutral peacemaker in world affairs.

What Malta’s neutrality translated into was clear for all to see when in 1986, Malta alerted Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi of an imminent US air strike, a move that may have saved his life. At that time, a government spokesman had told Associated Press that the warning was a routine communication between air controllers.

“Our air controllers picked up these planes headed for Libya on their radar screens and they told the Libyan air controllers they were coming,” the government spokesman said. “It’s a normal procedure.” Must have been another member from that unique Labour species from cuckoo land.

Strangely, Muscat is less squeamish today about air strikes on Libya than his predecessor. When Muscat met British Premier David Cameron, he said that if no diplomatic solution was found, and the Libyan people requested UN assistance (which Libyan faction that may be is anyone’s guess), then the West should be ready to respond.

You cannot govern through hype, spin and public charades like the one we had to witness at the airport

“The UN resolution which led to air support during the last Libyan revolution is still in place, and as such no new resolution would need to pass,” Muscat said.

One wonders what Mifsud Bonnici would have to say about that. The only Libyan revolution he probably recognises is the Gaddafi coup of 1969.

Now that he’s back on home turf, Muscat and the rest of his Cabinet have all but disappeared. Well, almost. He had to make a statement in Parliament after this newspaper let it be known that a Maltese had been abducted in Libya. He was keeping it secret, you see; national interest.

Then he made a grand appearance at the airport, accompanied by his interior and foreign affairs ministers, to welcome back Martin Galea from Libya and to pose for photos with him before Galea’s wife had even time to embrace him. Galea was polite. He thanked the envoy.

Since that day, the government has adopted a new face in the shape of Mario Cutajar, a General Workers’ Union guy who was politically appointed as head of the civil service, in itself a contradiction in terms, but perfectly normal for Labour.

Cutajar has been holding press briefings, ostensibly to keep people’s minds at rest that the government is prepared for any eventuality as the tragic situation in Libya unfolds. In his union days, he was a sharp and moderate man.

That he’s making a mess of the briefings is not his fault but that of the government that’s hiding behind him.

He’s had to admit that the government is still putting the jigsaw puzzle together over what happened to Galea.

At one point he could not confirm that an abduction had actually taken place, only to retract the next day after Galea started spilling the beans himself.

Cutajar must have also been at a loss when asked what policy applied to the provision of medical assistance to evacuees from Libya. He said: “As Christians, life is of the utmost importance to us and we will not pick and choose who we help.” A fine answer, but quite off message for a pseudo-liberal government out to secularise the Commonwealth through civil unions.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister George Vella has told Parliament that the decision to evacuate from Libya was not Malta’s alone. He said: “We are part of the EU and the EU heads of mission agreed to discuss the matter and, if the decision to evacuate is taken, we will all evacuate our people together.”

France has just gone ahead and started evacuating French and British expats. Britain has closed down its embassy. How is Cutajar ever going to explain that?

And as all this is going on, out comes the shocking news that female teachers sitting for interviews for various posts were being asked if they intended to get pregnant any time soon. The reaction – another government inquiry, just like there was over the summer schools debacle and like the many other inquires undertaken on practically anything the Interior Minister touches.

Inquiries at this stage are truly not enough, because these things should never happen in the first place. This flies in the face of government policy, if nothing else.

Yet this is a hands-on government, it micro manages the country, and mistakes like this keep slipping through the net. There is one explanation for that.

For Labour, government is all about appeasing the faithful and milking the proverbial cow fed from our taxes, and not about the proper functioning of its departments and of the enormous amount of public entities. That’s why the Prime Minister ends up being accompanied to the UK by a former Labour journalist representing ‘Project Malta’, an entity that does not exist except maybe in name.

Yes, this is a government living in cuckoo land because the focus is all wrong.

You cannot govern through hype, spin and public charades like the one we had to witness at the airport. Such stunts do not put people’s mind at rest that the government is capable of handling the Libya crisis. They just insult our intelligence.