We’ve had various attempts at explaining the Nationalist Party’s dismal failure at the polls. None of them really help shrink the mountain facing the PN.

Apart from leadership quality arguments (all subjective), the stark reality is that the PN has no significantly different or more appealing policies than Labour. Better governance was promised but this was ignored, or not believed, by the majority.

A Labour government (harking back to the 1970s’ and 1980s’ experience) was painted in high taxation and high unemployment hues but has now proved to provide low taxation, high employment rates, free non-means-tested health (steadily improving) and free non-means-tested tertiary education plus stipends.

‘New’ Labour has removed the ground from under the PN’s feet and made it its own.

If that were not a total walkover, Labour has now turned its sights to social housing (well done), ignored in the last few years, to the detriment of the poor. Speaking with a senior cleric from Senglea, I happened to mention that some claim poverty in Malta is fake news. He retorted that no politician has accepted his offer to show them poverty at first hand. Recent EU statistics were claimed to have demonstrated a 50 per cent drop in Maltese poverty. I wonder whether researchers at Caritas would accept that.

The new Cabinet would do well to also concentrate on the minimum wage and pensions, the main sources of poverty in a country registering the highest economic growth rates in the EU. If it does, Labour might well be entrenched in office for the next 20 years.

The future, however, is unpredictable – elections are often lost due to own goals.