Given Daphne Caruana Galizia’s recent revelations, the attention in the Nationalist Party leadership election campaign is being dominated by the question of whether Adrian Delia, one of the favourites, really is as financially exposed, personally, as the blogger says he is. But if her report is troubling enough to the undecided voters, so should the manner in which he replied.

It undercuts the unique selling point of his campaign.

Delia is promising a ‘New Way’ of doing politics. That slogan, like the promise of a bottom-up approach to have a ‘politics for the people’, is as old as the Roman empire and as recent as Simon Busuttil’s pledge to make the PN the ‘party of the people’.

And, having attended a PN club meeting where he was enthusiastically greeted by several dozen voters on a Tuesday evening, I can say that the basis of his appeal isn’t that he’s saying anything remotely new. He’s promising a party of common sense not of special vision. He’s making a back-to-basics promise to rebuild the PN as a streetwise political machine.

Why does it come across as credible when, of the four contenders, he’s the one with by far the least experience in campaign organisation? Because of his calculated personal performance, which can begin even days before his actual stump speech.

Take the club I visited. When he made his stump speech, he was hardly known. But word had already spread about him that he is a new kind of leadership contender.

The denizens of party clubs have their own benchmarks for assessing party grandees. One leader is known for visiting frequently enough but never approaching the bar. Another would drink a whisky at the bar but not spend more than 20 minutes. Yet another seemed remote: despite his personal warmth, he seemed unfamiliar with the lore and heroes of that particular club.

And Delia? Days before he addressed the councillors and members at the club, he had turned up, almost anonymously. With the barman, he shared some quail. At the pool table, he challenged the best locals to beat him. All with a bravado and glint in the eye that is part of any bar regular’s performance.

By the time he oh-so-casually reminded his seated listeners of all this, the news had already gone round. The listeners were already attuned to the message that he stood for a new politics. Against the background of past leaders, with their own way of controlling intimacy and distance, this was certainly new.

To defend himself, Adrian Delia short-sightedly gave Labour’s spin credibility

Delia is his own message. His listeners aren’t fools. They know a performance when they see one. But here is a case where being able to perform is part of the job description.

Try pointing out that Delia is being economical with the truth when he says that, for family reasons, he couldn’t enter politics in 2013. (There are several witnesses, in the thick of the leadership campaign back then, ready to say he had actively explored a leadership run.)

Your listener is likely to shrug and smile as though to say: yes, he’s cunning. That’s what we need against Labour.

Try pointing out that it’s extraordinary that he felt he needed a four-year apprenticeship, as vice-president, before he made a bid to lead Birkirkara FC, and yet he thinks leading the Opposition is simple enough that he can slide into the leader’s role with no partisan experience to speak of.

That implied criticism, too, makes no impact on his sympathisers. His performance – his I-know-that-you-know way with people – convinces them that he is streetwise, someone who can outfox Labour and truly engage with the public.

That, anyway, is the unique selling point he projects. And he’s completely undermined it with the way he’s replied to Caruana Galizia’s report that he is financially exposed to the tune of €7.2 million.

That is a worst-case scenario. Delia has protested that it’s a remote one in practice. Let us, for the sake of argument, go along with him. His reply is still breathtaking in the political short-termism it displays.

First, he complains about the report itself. He says it’s not normal. Hasn’t he been following Labour’s spin over the last 25 years?

Or just the last four? Labour’s machine managed to portray Busuttil simultaneously as weak (with PN voters) and cold-heartedly ruthless (with Labour voters).

What Caruana Galizia wrote about Delia is nothing compared with what Labour will say about Busuttil’s successor, whoever he is. Complaining would be a very weak response. If that’s what Delia plans to do, he’ll soon lose his ‘fighter’ mantle and come across as feeble.

Second, he says he wanted to follow precedent and disclose his assets and liabilities if and when he becomes leader. Caruana Galizia, like many others, treats this answer as mendacious. But let’s take it as true.

It reveals extraordinary naivety. The precedents come from a different time. When the political party you want to lead has a notorious debt problem, the last thing you want is to come across as having hidden your own personal debt until the last possible moment. It shows terrible political judgement.

Anyone should be able to see that Labour would have a field day talking about a debt-ridden party led by a debt-ridden leader. (The very propaganda would actually make Delia and his business partners encounter greater difficulties in paying off their debts.)

And it would be extraordinarily difficult to shake off that first impression Delia would make as leader. Everything he says would come across as defence while caught on the backfoot.

Not to have understood this, not to have come up with a better communication strategy, undercuts Delia’s claims about himself. His street wisdom, his understanding of political cut and thrust, his understanding of communication, his ability to outfox Labour. He comes across as not even being able to protect his own interests.

Third, to defend himself against Caruana Galizia, Delia decided to allude to hidden interests in the PN, determined to preserve power and to pull all strings to get their way.

This is Labour’s spin. The idea that Caruana Galizia is someone else’s attack dog quickly evaporates the moment the facts are examined. The idea that she exerts any power within the PN as an organisation (versus influence over a segment of the PN’s voters) is also nonsense.

But, to defend himself, Delia gave Labour’s spin credibility. That’s a very short-sighted form of self-defence. Should he become leader, he will have to begin by undermining the credibility he himself strengthened.

This was Delia’s first test facing an adversary. And he failed it. Of course, he can get better. But it had better be fast.

ranierfsadni@europe.com