The Constitutional Court has, very politely, told assorted lovers of the heroic deed of killing birds that their application to fend off the referendum designed to end Spring hunting holds no legal merit and that there is nothing to prevent the referendum being held.
The Prime Minister, showing the decisiveness and mettle that has characterised his governance of the country from day one, immediately said that the law, and the will of the people, would be respected.
Had he said something other than that, he would have made the news, though truth be told, given the way "the will of the people" was respected by his predecessors in Labour governments through the ages, it is understandable that what Muscat said was met with a smidgen of pleased surprise.
I recall to your memory, if you will allow me, the manner in which the will of the people was respected by Dom Mintoff in 1981 and by Alfred Sant after the referendum to join the EU.
Muscat, virtually in the same breath, let it be known that he will be voting to allow Spring hunting to remain legal, but that he will be allowing a free vote.
His vote, just as it was when he voted for us to remain out of the EU (what price his passports now, had his opinion prevailed?) is his privilege and he can cast it, or even not cast it all, exactly as he likes.
That said, does the Leader of the Labour Party, and of the country, really think that his own, personal, view of how he should vote and his declaration of what he is going to do, is not going to influence his admirers and supporters? Does he want us to think that the country, or at least significant portions of it, does not gaze upon him with admiration or look to him for guidance?
Does he really think, then, that his generous and magnaminous decree that he is allowing a free vote has not been immediately and materially debased by his own declaration of what he thinks the vote should be?
And that is quite apart from the riposte he is inviting, on the lines of "oh, really, thank you, you're letting me vote as I think fit?", by letting it be known that he will be allowing a free vote.
What was the alternative, being told how to vote by the PM, willy-nilly?
That sort of voting takes place in the totalitarian and unfree "Democratic Peoples' Republic of Wherever" that still pollute the world.