Members of the commenting class who qualify as members of Labour's chorus of Lil'Elves and Peculiar Pundits, and a few of the mainstream columnists whose output is characterised by their smug conviction that they know better than Dr Gonzi a) how to run the country and b) how to run his party, have made much of what they describe as the divisions within the Nationalist Party.

Indeed, Dr Muscat himself, who in a previous incarnation qualified as an Enormous Elf, is revelling in what he describes as the Nationalists' "implosion".

Let's just analyse this "implosion", shall we?

The government was brought to an election a few months earlier than it would have happened anyway by single renegade MP. The mix slushing around in his head was enriched by a sense of his own importance in the general scheme of things that appears seriously unjustified, his Form IIC Mid-Year Report Card and his Infant's Xmas Sermon notwithstanding (oh, and he wrote a letter to someone, once, too)

If you think I'm not accurate in that assessment, check out Dr Debono's last speech in the House. If you can bring yourself to plough through that particular rant, that is.

And what of Labour's other idols, Muscat's evidence of an imploded party? Pullicino Orlando, for instance, who Labour had sought to crucify and who has come out in his true colours, colours it may fairly be said that confirm why he had almost contrived to lose the PN the last elections, even after Alfred Sant had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

This is one of those on whom Muscat relies to squeal about the PN's disintegration?

Or is it Mugliett who has rent the party asunder, always in the strange reality espoused by the L'Es and PPs? Or maybe it's former EU Commissioner John Dalli, a man who Labour used to love to try to smear with corruption but who became their Best, indeed Bestest, Buddy when he started complaining about his gilded cage in Brussels.

To be fair to Labour, they seem to have dropped Dalli, perhaps for reasons not unconnected with the sort of stuff they used to try to make stick to him. Now, cynical opportunists that they are, they will proceed to drop Debono and the other two, lest they find themselves hoist with their own tar smeared petard.

Too late, guys, from now on in the Nationalists are well and truly rid of the quartet of tawdry albatrosses, but you're going to have to put up with them flapping around you for a bit longer.

After all, you're the ones who fed them, so now they're your little pets.