If only Adrian Delia’s central office had been as well prepared for the European Parliament election as they were for the crushing defeat. Following a botched campaign, his spin machine spluttered into action when a result on a par with Britain’s showing at Eurovision filtered through: ‘We expected worse’, ‘EP election voting patterns don’t reflect those at general elections’, ‘Delia is only a few years into a long-term turnaround’. 

All these reasons, or excuses if you share my uncharitable mood, contain fragile strands of truth to which the vanquished may cling: Simon Busuttil, and before him Lawrence Gonzi, had both been at the painful end of electoral drubbings; the turnout at the next election is likely to be much larger than it was last Saturday; and, indeed, the Nationalist Party leader’s tenure is still in its relative infancy. 

This message has been pushed out enthusiastically by Delia loyalists, who have been falling over themselves to sing the business-as-usual tune. But what about the rest? 

Not wishing to be left out, magnanimous Labour Party supporters have been adding harmonious tones to the confidence-in-the-leader chorus. No self-interest there, of course. But what about the rest?

Some have been posing questions, chief among which are what has the Opposition leader achieved and where is he taking the party? The answers do not make for encouraging reading. 

We know that he publicly tore strips off Daphne Caruana Galizia when she bludgeoned him by blog, only to climb down some time after she was murdered in a misguided attempt to curry favour with her die-hard followers, who, for want of a better term, are ‘Old PN’. All it did was make them more angry. 

We know that Delia announced the sacking of their flagbearer, Busuttil, following the publication of the Egrant inquiry, only to retract when he felt the full force of a backlash that threatened to split the PN in two. All this did was make the party more angry. 

We know that he spoke out against desperate migrants landing on Malta’s shores, only to fumble for reverse gear – with the grace of a driver on a level crossing who has just spotted an oncoming train – when Ivorian Lassana Cisse Souleyman was murdered in what is alleged to have been a racially motivated attack. This made everybody angry. 

We also know that he fell out with the Democratic Party as well as with the Times of Malta when it had the temerity to ask questions about his party’s hypocritical dealings with the owner of 17 Black, and... we are furnished with the knowledge that he is against abortion because his party dedicated an electoral billboard to the issue even though it is not on the government’s agenda. 

While political masterstrokes do not seem to be the Delia team’s forte, Labour, making full use of the power of incumbency and the opposition before them, offered a gourmet menu of hope, projects and aspiration against an effectively muffled backdrop of corruption accusations. 

Labour offered a gourmet menu of hope, projects and aspiration against an effectively muffled backdrop of corruption accusations

We know who won, so no point dwelling on that. But who are the losers?

Despite their protestations and talk about the ‘Nationalists’ who stayed home – based on the delusional premise that such a group still exists like it did back in 1996 when the PN suffered a shock defeat – Delia and his team were annihilated.

 And there is already an air of inevitability come the next general election whether Joseph Muscat will still be around or not. 

Yet it would be a mistake to think that jettisoning Delia and his under performers, necessary though it may be, is a panacea for the Nationalist Party’s woes. The thorn-in-the-side presence of the Busuttil contingent, who steadfastly opposed Delia’s election and will never accept him as leader (they have every right), is a factor the party ignores at its ever-increasing peril.

Some may argue that this group was formed in reaction to Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder and its intolerable aftermath. 

But they had already assembled as a protest lobby before that heinous act took place, and Busuttil’s refusal to emulate his predecessors and leave the stage, even though he brought down the curtain himself, has only served to add fuel to what has become a raging fire within the party.

And while pursuing justice for her assassination has understandably galvanised them in pursuit of a pressing, necessary and obligatory objective that should be supported by all of us, they have diluted this quest by attempting to adopt all her causes – which has included taking constant pot shots at the PN leadership – while seemingly failing to have learnt any lessons about why the PN lost office six years ago and performed so dismally at the polls in 2017.

Worse still, in the process some have resorted to coordinated attacks on social media – the most vicious tend to occur through anonymous accounts – on all those who have not subscribed to each and every one of their at times extreme utterances. This intolerance for alternative viewpoints has alienated many moderates who should have been considered natural allies. 

There are certainly national issues that need to be confronted, particularly regarding to the strength or otherwise of the country’s institutions, but a divisive approach is doing as much harm to the Nationalist Party’s prospects of winning another election in the foreseeable future as Delia’s abject failure.

Steve Mallia is a former Editor-in-Chief at Allied Newspapers.

This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece