You know that something’s wrong within the house of Labour when three out of five of its last editorials are dedicated to attacking the Nationalist Party rather than flaunting government’s perceived achievements.

This has been the case over the last weeks with regard to the PN’s proposals for small businesses. A 10 per cent flat rate tax for small businesses is a proposal to be seriously examined and considered in view of the fact that smaller businesses need government’s support to fuel more ambition, and hence more employment, into their enterprises.

Yet, instead of relating to this proposal for the sake of mature argument for the benefit of society at large, the Labour machinery, including its deputy leader, have indulged in an orchestrated endeavour to discredit the idea and the important issues it is meant to address through cheap tricks trying to deviate the attention of the public from the idea itself.

The cheap attack circles around a visit by the leader of the Opposition to a small business. The owner of the said business, one out of scores of others visited, is recorded on camera trying to put some objectivity into what he understands as a political exercise by saying that things are not bad for his business at present.

This simple comment is taken, cut, broadcast and repeated hundred times over on Labour channels as some sort of illustration that businesses in Malta are thriving in a perfect environment and in no need of any other consideration or stimulus from public authority. This attitude is in itself a testimony to the detachment of Labour from this sector of society.

Then we have the minister himself entering the cheap debacle by suggesting in Parliament that the businessman in question has had a visit by trade inspectors as retribution for his comment in the presence of the Opposition leader. Wait a minute! Since when are trade inspectors responding to the Opposition and not to government? And since when are trade inspections an act of political retribution and not part of regular business administration?

Beyond the answers to the questions above, Chris Cardona’s linking of the trade inspection to the visit of the Opposition leader is another dirty trick from Labour’s big stack of dirty cards. This time the cards were played in a way to deviate attention from the substance of a good proposal through repeated staged-up mockery and a political smokescreen in our highest institution.

Truth remains however that businesses themselves are seriously considering this proposal among several others issued so far by the PN. No matter how hard Labour tries to obscure the alternative to this sorry state of affairs called Joseph Muscat’s government the picture of that alternative is slowly but surely coming out.

It looks much more serious,certainly much cleaner and certainly more credible than the present offer.