Joseph Muscat tries very hard to make us believe that during the recent European elections he led some sort of movement of 'progressives'; that he was at the forefront in a campaign to get Malta out of the Middle Ages into a new dawn.

Come on Dr Muscat, we are not all a bunch of coffee morning addicts, drooling on your every word uttered for the benefit of the faithful. You and your party's campaign focused on grievances people had and, as successful as it was, to now interpret the results any other way is pure pie in the sky.

The Labour Party campaign centered on the water and electricity tariffs, hoodwinking the people into believing that the party had some magic formula that could protect it from the realities of the global oil market, keeping the tariffs low no matter what the market dictated.

That is what the people understood, and that explains the outburst of the Labour Party's general secretary after the elections that a Labour Party in government would reduce the water and electricity tariffs.

This gimmick was a re-run of the VAT debacle by Alfred Sant in 1996. It won Dr Sant an election, only to get him shipwrecked later on the shoals of reality. After the EP elections, the Labour Party went into denial mode, with Dr Muscat and his merry men running for cover, proclaiming that they never promised lower tariffs.

How is that for 'modern - new dawn' campaigning?