Our Prime Minister can be a real spoilsport sometimes; I’m beginning not to like him. There he was in London last week selling EU passports for Henley & Partners (or is it the other way around?) and he won’t tell us what he said. The Department of Information would only say there was a seminar attended by “high-quality investors that are the type of people with talent and global contacts that Malta is attracting”. Yes, they actually said that; but they didn’t release his speech, which is a real shame.

Joseph Muscat’s international speeches are incredibly entertaining, because they read like Labour’s electoral manifesto in bad English, full of wishy-washy statements that mean the exact opposite of what they say. The difference is that in London, Muscat was targeting Russian millionaires and their talented sort, not the working class Labour voter base or middle class voters going through a midlife crisis.

The end result, whether in London or Malta, is the same: this is a Labour swindle.

Yet, the little that the DOI would let out about the London seminar was fascinating enough. Muscat told his potentially new Maltese citizens that innovation was the key to success. Since independence, he said, Malta has made progress in the manufacturing, tourism, financial and remote gaming industries, and was now “all set to lead, not follow, in the innovative advances of the concept of citizenship”.

Translated into something that makes remote sense, the Prime Minister seems to be saying he considers the selling of EU passports as being at par with major industries like our financial services.

This is his sole economic plan, his one contribution to the economy, an idea that he says came to him after he became prime minister. Now that doesn’t exactly put your mind at rest.

Once this country was famous for its burgeoning piracy industry, and now it’s being turned into an international pawnshop. Get a million euro, pretend you live here, and you get a passport to Europe.

The Prime Minister thinks it’s an industry. To be fair, a monti hawker would think the same.

To attend the London bazaar, the Prime Minister had to miss out on a far more serious conference in Malta, ‘50 years of FDI; looking forward’, organised by EY Malta. Oblivious to the pathetic irony, Muscat made a video link from London to address a conference in his own country.

While down here the likes of Alastair Campbell were discussing how to best brand Malta internationally, the Prime Minister beamed in from London to tell the conference participants: Malta is a beacon of hope in our region. Malta can be for the Mediterranean what Singapore is for Asia and what Dubai is for the Gulf.

Whose hope is he referring to? There are thousands of desperate people risking their lives on dodgy boats from Libya and the last beacon they want to see is the one from the Delimara lighthouse. This beacon country refused a request for medical assistance from a ship captain because one of his seamen may have had Ebola. For months, the government has said it was prepared for any Ebola emergency, but the Health Parliamentary Secretary has just ordered full-head hoods to treat Ebola cases via DHL. Ebay, albeit slower, might have been cheaper.

In his video-link from never-never world, the Prime Minister said he would “stick to facts” and went on to boast of such incredible economic figures that, he cockily pointed out, “the hosts of this conference had to revise upwards their outlook for the country”.

Yes, they might have revised forecasts but the “hosts of this conference” have also just released a Malta Attractiveness Survey that shows a downward trend. Maybe, the Prime Minister was right to choose peddling passports in London to facing reality at a conference back home.

Surprisingly, it was Economy Minister Chris Cardona who threw cold water on Muscat’s Mintoffian-style delusion that Malta is the centre and beacon of the world.

This is not a government, this a Labour occupation. That was not an electoral programme, it was a swindle

He blandly said that foreign investors don’t even know where Malta is, let alone what the benefits of investing here are. And, stripping off the Emperor’s new clothes to their bare essentials, he said: “Once you go beyond the EU, nobody knows about us. They don’t even know we are an island in the Mediterranean.”

Actually, many inside the EU do not know about Malta either. Back in Germany, I once had to show the chimney sweep a map of the Mediterranean because she wouldn’t believe that a thing like Malta actually existed. The Prime Minister could do with a similar reality check and, for our good, stop looking upon the world from his high tower in Burmarrad.

Muscat is rare to spot in public, nowadays. He usually reserves his disappearing acts to when there’s a crisis on the horizon.

Which explains why his wife has been more visible than he is. A few days ago, she was happily inaugurating a new ward at Mount Carmel Hospital in her capacity as, well, a prime minister’s wife.

She had much more to say about a hospital ward than her husband had to say about a whole new power station.

The absolutely disgusting and offensive way the Prime Minister finally admitted the blatant obvious, that the gas-driven power station in Marsaxlokk will not be finished by March despite his government’s constant reassurances, marks the beginning of the fall of the 2013 Labour swindle.

The gas power plant was the kernel of the whole Labour electoral programme. The election campaign was dominated by the energy rates and by a solemn promise from Labour that it would build a new power plant by the coming March. The specific date projected a sense of Labour determination and energy, a commitment to get out there and do it. They nearly sounded like they knew what they were talking about. Many fell for the scam.

Asked directly if the power station would be ready in six months’ time, Muscat replied that water and electricity shall be decreased for businesses. There is a plan, he said, “and I can confirm that the rates will go down in March”.

But nobody had asked him about rates. So, some reporter managed to get another question in: is this an admission that the power station will not be ready in six months?

“It is not an admission,” said the Prime Minister, “on the contrary it is a confirmation that the rates will go down.”

That reply was offensive. The Prime Minister should learn to distinguish between a Labour rabble from Bormla and an average citizen with average intelligence who finds such mockery deeply insulting.

Naturally, he couldn’t really admit that the timeframe would not be met. He left that dirty work to his Energy Minister who popped up in China still trying to close the deal. Muscat said he would resign if his government did not deliver the power station on time. Not that anyone took that seriously, but shifting goalposts now is typical of Labour: it is shifty and cheap.

Everyone knows that without this incredible power station that is supposed to provide cheaper energy, there is no way the country will afford the energy cuts.

The costs of lower energy rates will just come out from our taxes, or from fluctuating oil prices that nanny-state Labour benefits from, at consumers’ expense.

Labour is failing to deliver on its most basic electoral promise, one upon which it staked its own credibility. If it cannot even begin to deliver this, how on earth are we to expect it to deliver anything at all? Which goes to explain quite a few things.

This is not a government, this a Labour occupation. That was not an electoral programme, it was a swindle. This is a country grinding slowly to a halt because there was never a road map and no real plan to build a power station in two years.

There is no leadership and absolutely no commitment at all by any of Muscat’s motley crew to implement the most essential item in Labour’s electoral programme: a power station. It was all a sham.

All along, the only objective was power, and Labour got it. Sated with success, Muscat now thinks he’s sitting on top of a beacon in the middle of the Mediterranean.

He can’t even produce the electricity to light it up.

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