Outflanked?

Has Bobby Abela been outflanked by Alex Borg?  Or, for that matter, has he outflanked himself?

Now there’s a pair of questions that would have had Labour apparatchiks choking on their subsidised canapés only a few months ago. The very idea that the Dear Leader, dispenser of cheques, permits, consultancies, public jobs and the occasional miracle, might suddenly look rattled by the PN’s young whippersnapper would once have been treated as comedy material.

And yet.  And yet?

Let me start by pointing out that I don’t know Alex Borg at all. I’ve never sat down with the man, never shared a coffee, and never discussed politics, football, or the price of rabbit with him. Our paths have simply never crossed, and there was no reason why they should have.

So I can’t pretend to offer some deep insight into his character.

The other guy, however, I have encountered. Back before he ascended to the Olympian heights of Castille and began floating about the country like a sort of taxpayer-funded sun king with a yacht habit and an allergy to scrutiny, he was a jobbing lawyer, younger than me (the vast majority are).

Let’s just say that, judged purely as a standalone proposition, he does not exactly inspire me to charge through the streets waving banners in ecstatic devotion, especially given the nature of his erstwhile client.

But over the last few days, something rather interesting happened.

Abela, brave tribune of the people, defender of democracy, titan of transparency, decided that discretion was the better part of valour and declined to stand up and face questions on il-Każin.  Meanwhile, Borg did.

And whatever you think of Borg politically, he stood there and took it like a man.

You might ask, why does that matter?  Why should the Awesome Bobby jump with the common masses and subject himself to impertinence and probing?

Well, you might conclude that politics is often less about brilliance than about optics. The public notices when one politician walks into the arena while another develops an urgent prior engagement somewhere far away from microphones and follow-up questions.

Abela preferred to continue spinning this absolutely extraordinary yarn that he is somehow the underdog in the next elections, just him against the world, as it were.

Oodles and oodles of cash are currently being sprayed around the electorate with the subtle restraint of a drunk oligarch in a Monaco casino.

Entire ministries seem to have been repurposed into electoral vending machines, and you get calls asking if you need anything, though if you miss it and stupidly call back (did that), you find yourself being told what number to punch, before you hang up in wonderment.

All of this does make you wonder whether some surveys are perhaps being reverse-engineered as a post hoc ergo propter hoc political psychology experiment.

As in, oy, you, make it look like Labour is going to absolutely cream the opposition, so PN voters stay home because what’s the point, right?

And if that is the strategy, then another question naturally follows.  Does Abela know something the rest of us don’t?  Like the truth behind the numbers, maybe?

Is there, beneath the smirk and the swagger and the carefully stage-managed triumphalism, the faint clammy sensation of political mortality creeping up his spine? I tend to doubt it.  The Maltese voter has demonstrated an almost supernatural tolerance for scandal, general sleaze, and criminality, provided the roads get resurfaced, and the tax refunds arrive on time.

But perhaps Abela noticed that even Hungary’s Viktor Orbán got bloodied.  So perhaps there really is the tiniest sliver of anxiety in Castille.

Because otherwise, why leave an empty podium on Monday night? Did Abela genuinely think Borg would implode if left to his own devices? Or was the greater danger that he wouldn’t?

Which he didn’t.