<p">Answering questions on Al Jazeera, and quoted on the Times this morning, the PM said he wanted Europe to “smell the coffee”.

I make no comment about the tone adopted by the PM in the interview, he can’t help the sound of his voice, but come on, seriously, our level of international diplomacy has come to this? 

Our Prime Minister, no less, thinks it’s a good wheeze to stir up a veritable hornets’ nest, make the European Court of Human Rights issue an emergency decree (or whatever it’s called, this isn’t a lesson in legal procedure) and generally make us look like a nation of racist skinhead thugs, just to make Europe smell the coffee?  

Will he be making this sort of slick remark when he’s chatting with his peers at the Council tables?   I hope not, but I have this nagging doubt that he will be.

So it was all a ruse, was it?   Sure, and that’s a pig flying past my window, that’s what that is.  

There’s another interpretation: Joseph Muscat misjudged the national mood, because he’s been lulled into this (understandable) sense of security by his thirty-six or seven or whatever thousand majority and his nine seats in the House, and he didn’t think that so many of us would see his little stunt as a blot on our reputation.  

As he has in so many other, less important cases, he backtracked sharply, playing it down and trying to give the impression that it was all high diplomacy and slick international dealing, rather than what it was, pandering to the racist xenophobic bigots who were so vociferous in their support for him before the election.

As I said, that’s just another interpretation, just little me looking at the facts that are out there, in public, and putting my own spin on them.

What is a fact, and not an interpretation, is that Muscat’s stunt was extremely effective in removing the stone and exposing the sad revolting little racists that still lurk underneath it.    

All the usual suspects have come out, smirking and smug in their perception that no less an authority in the country than its Prime Minister has endorsed what they’ve been shrieking for years: kick them all into the sea.  

It’s useless Muscat now saying that this isn’t what he meant, something of the lines of “I didn’t mean it mummy, sorry”, he’s given their vile ideas oxygen, make no mistake.

Either Muscat was unaware of this disgusting substratum of Maltese society (it’s not peculiar to us, there are plenty of racists in plenty of other countries) and – hopefully – is as disgusted as the rest of us or he was aware that it exists and simply doesn’t mind that all the world can see it now, because it was expedient to pull this stunt just at the minute.  

It is a fact, even if the less ‘Net savvy don’t actually get it, that whatever is out there in the virtual world can be seen by everyone in the real world and what they’re seeing is a moronic bunch of thugs just itching to kick refugees and Muslims and any other human being that doesn’t meet their high standards of civilization (and my tongue is well lodged in my cheek, for the less attuned to sarcasm amongst you) into the sea, preferably to drown and even more preferably after having been given a darn good hiding.

So, thank you, Prime Minister, you’ve reminded me that there are many, many people in this world, and in particularly in this country, who are simply scum.  You’ve also made my country, and consequently me, look very bad in the eyes of the world, which you can see for yourself when you look at the international press.  

But not to worry, there are plenty who don’t take my view on this, the problem being that I wouldn’t want their approval.  

Quite the contrary.