I'm getting that feeling all over again.

In the run-up to the divorce referendum (you know the one, when our MPs ducked the bullet and let it hit us) for all that I was pro divorce even before JPO dreamt up his little stunt, I was starting to get anti-feelings, such was the annoyance-quotient being generated by the pros, with their whiney stridency and prissy posing.

I got over it and voted "yes", even if there was a danger that the Bishop of Gozo would excommunicate me, and happily for the sake of the cause of secularism, so did many of you.

The result led to the PM declaring unequivocally that the will of the people will be respected and - clearly not to his great pleasure - a divorce law will be enacted.

To my mind, it having been the case that the MPs had passed the buck to us, it now isn't really open to any of them to vote against the Bill. Technically, it is perfectly OK for any of them so to do, because the referendum was only consultative, and as long as the PM's declaration is given effect, our collective desires will not be thwarted, and you can understand the conscientious objections being raised, to be fair.

Austin Gatt put it very well and while I still feel an abstention is the furthest his conscience should push him, it's his conscience, not mine.

Such is the hysteria of the reactions to the positions being taken by Gatt and people like him that, as my title suggests, it's happening to me again. I'm starting to swing away from previous conviction that "nay" is not acceptable to wondering whether it isn't enough that the law is going to pass and there's an end to it.

After all, it's not as if the people had voted for something and the whole party was voting against it as a matter of principle. You know, something on the lines of the way the Labour Party had reacted to the result of the EU Referendum. There wasn't a free vote then, not by a long shot.