Twelve Years. Three Leaders. One Glorious Loop of Nowhere.
Twelve years. That’s how long it’s been since Labour burst out of the Naxxar Counting Hall like a flaming rocket powered by voter rage and a suspicious amount of electoral Red Bull, leaving the Nationalist Party in a smoking crater of existential crisis and confused applause.
Since then, the PN has done what any self-respecting political party does when it loses catastrophically: it changes the wallpaper, moves the chairs around, and sets fire to itself three times for good measure.
Let’s be honest, the PN hasn’t just struggled. It’s made struggling into an Olympic sport.
Simon Busuttil: The Man With the Plan (Just Not a Very Good One)
Simon came from Brussels, which probably explains why he was so good at issuing calm press statements and so bad at winning elections. He looked the part, sounded the part… but had all the firepower of a damp tea towel.
He abstained on civil unions, lost an MEP election by the same soul-crushing margin as the general one, and even when the Panama Papers came along, the political equivalent of a grenade wrapped in scandal, he still couldn’t dent Muscat’s grinning face.
Result? Labour wins again, Simon resigns, and the PN’s progress chart looks like a flatline on a heart monitor.
Adrian Delia: The Outsider Who Accidentally Walked Into a Civil War
Next, the PN went off-road and picked Adrian Delia, the first leader elected by the party’s full membership, which, it turns out, is a bit like letting the passengers fly the plane mid-turbulence.
Delia was the anti-establishment pick, the loud-talking football man who wanted to clean up the system… but forgot he’d have to start with his own team, who didn’t want him there in the first place.
He clashed with Daphne Caruana Galizia, got savaged by her followers, and was booed by protestors at his own rallies. At one point, his trust rating was so low, pigeons stopped landing near him in case they got blamed for something.
Even when he was proven right, like on the hospitals’ scandal, no one noticed, because by then the public had mentally replaced him with a houseplant.
Eventually, his own party turfed him out like a dodgy flatmate who keeps burning the toast.
Bernard Grech: The Dentist Trying to Stitch a Party Back Together With Dental Floss
In came Bernard. Nice guy. Smooth voice. Would probably offer you a mint before politically decapitating you.
He promised unity. He tried. He really did. He even started stitching together the party’s broken pieces with duct tape and awkward Christmas cards. And for a moment, just a moment, it looked like the PN was climbing back into the race.
The 2024 MEP elections were a shocker: Labour panicked. The PN closed the gap. Hope returned.
And then… Bernard vanished into a fog of silence, bad polling, and internal grumblings. Nine months later, he resigned. The momentum? Dead. The comeback? Postponed. Again.
Square One: Population – PN
Twelve years. Three leaders. Zero reinvention. The PN hasn’t moved forward, it’s just changed drivers on a bus with no wheels, no engine, and a satnav that only points to “1998”.
Meanwhile, Labour — the party that’s had more scandals than a soap opera — still wins. Why? Because it knows how to adapt. It knows how to gut itself and come out smiling. The PN? It’s still arguing about whether the curtains match the sofa.
So here we are. Again. PN back to square one. Again. Another leadership race, another fresh start, another chance to fumble it all with style.
The sad truth? The PN isn’t out of ideas. It’s just allergic to using them.
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