I watched Bondi+ last Monday, and was impressed. Not particularly by Mr Bondi, except insofar as concerns his capacity for controlling himself in the face of a bunch of squabbling people, but by a couple of the panel members. Mr Bondi is impressive in other spheres, anyway, as he knows. For those worrying, I'm extracting the Michael.

For the record, the erudite panellists were the Hons. Mario deMarco, Karmenu Vella, Dolores Cristina and Marlene Pullicino and the sum of their parts was quite a squabble. I had no idea that Ms Cristina was such a doughty fighter, there's a word for her in Maltese which I've no idea how to translate.

I was impressed, however, not by the eagerness with which the participants laid into each other but by the qualities demonstrated by the Labour elements. Mr Karmenu Vella, for instance, transported us back to the Seventies with his politically crude interventions, while at the same time showing that he was not up to speed on many issues, which the Nationalist side took almost sadistic pleasure in highlighting every time he slipped.

Almost as impressive in her failure to impress was Ms Pullicino, who seems to think that interrupting with a self-satisfied smirk on her face in order to spout her party line in a monotone, which to be fair was not as irritating as her party colleague's grating voice, is the way to conduct one's self in a political debate.

This would not be worrying were it not for the fact that these two are - apparently (why else would they have been sent to do battle?) - key figures within the party that is hoping to govern the country in a couple of years. Mr Vella, no less, is tasked with writing their electoral programme, which is going to read like the book version of "Back to the Future".

He was appointed, one has to surmise, by Dr Joseph Muscat, which goes quite a way to proving a point that many are making, namely that he's not quite Prime Ministerial material quite yet.