I was polishing off a rather good dinner at Lord Nelson's (not free, but not paid for by the money I earn, lest the twisted and bitter think it appropriate to make an ignorant remark) when I almost choked on my half-and-half dessert. It was my own fault for being teenage enough to be fiddling with my phone while in polite company, but these things happen in the best of families.

I exaggerate for effect, of course.

timesofmalta carried Labour's masterpiece of faux naivete' online, reporting to the world that according to the professors of democracy, the Government had buried its democratic credentials. This was because the amendment being proposed by Labour to its own motion on Dr Carm Mifsud Bonnici's administration of his portfolio was being contested by the Government.

There you have it: not only are Labour not competent enough to get their own wording right in the first place, when someone has the nerve to play them at their own game (have you ever heard their MPs perorating about pettifogging procedure, they're wonders at it?) they get all precious and start squealing about democratic credentials.

And do you know what the excuse they used was?

Bear with me, it's a tad labyrinthine, but apparently, because the Nationalists didn't vote en bloc to introduce divorce when it was rammed down the country's throat (and thankfully the country swallowed it whole and we've now got divorce on the statute books) this means that if the CMB Motion were to pass in its original form, he wouldn't feel constrained to resign.

Now don't go blaming me, that's the reasoning they used, so help me, and if you don't understand it, you know nothing about democracy.

Labour, on the other hand, know everything there is to know about democracy, about governing in the face of a majority that voted you out, about suspending the Constitutional Court for months, about the suspension of human rights, for that matter, in the face of economic expediency (there's a fine excuse) and about entering into secret treaties with the North Koreans, themselves paladins of democracy.

And those are just examples.

What a nerve. Labour propose a motion that is so transparently designed to ride piggy-back on Dr Debono's well publicised distaste for Mifsud Bonnici, that is so obviously an ambush with cynical, partisan objectives, that is, in short, another exercise in bullying, and then they have the unmitigated effrontery to accuse the Government of burying its democratic credentials.

The only consolation is that they admit that the Government has democratic credentials, which many may hold is more than can be said for Labour in its various manifestations over the years.