The Nationalist Party is recovering from a tough election and is slowly but surely uniting behind its new leader, at least according to Nationalist MP Claudette Buttigieg.

But there are clearly still differing points of view: she admitted that she would not have gone to the opening of the former Café Premier as the new Valletta Council offices, and that she would have appointed a new shadow Cabinet, not to mention avoiding the needless controversy over IVF for lesbians. Yet, she insisted in a Times Talk interview that she was completely loyal to the party and its new leader.

“I agree with [Adrian Delia] on a few things and disagree with him on quite a few others, but that does not mean that he is not my leader or that I am not part of the party,” she said.

Ms Buttigieg defended the bickering within the parliamentary group as healthy debate, saying that perhaps it was hard for voters to get used to this style of openness, compared to the ‘behind closed doors’ approach of the Labour Party, which, she pointed out, had its own disputes.