From Farage to Farce: The PN’s Latest Gamble

Right then, let’s sharpen the knives.

The PN has a new leader. Alex Borg. But before anyone starts blathering about rebirth and fresh horizons, let’s call this what it is: a party that’s been lying in a ditch for a decade has just propped itself up on one elbow and muttered, “still alive, sort of.”

Photo: James Bianchi/MaltaToday)

Borg only just won, wafer-thin, narrower than a spaghetti strand, which is hardly the sort of triumph that makes people think “ah yes, here comes the saviour.” What he does bring is youth, a new face, and the sense that the PN isn’t entirely run by men who still think the fax machine is cutting-edge technology. But experience? He’s got about as much as a teenager on his first driving lesson.

And let’s talk about the leadership race itself. If this was supposed to showcase competence, it was a spectacular own goal. The electoral commission ran it with all the slickness of a goat trying to ice skate. Delays, confusion, a media policy so laughably restrictive it could have been drafted by a Soviet bureaucrat on a bad day. The PN wanted to look professional. Instead, it reminded the country that the party can barely organise its own lunch.

Now, Borg says it’s a “new chapter.” Lovely. But at the moment it looks less like a bold new saga and more like a pamphlet someone’s photocopied upside down. His views don’t exactly fit the PN’s old playbook. Pro-Trump, pro-Meloni, conference buddy of Nigel Farage. That’s a cocktail guaranteed to make moderates choke on their pastizzi.

Meanwhile, the PN machine is falling apart. Its policies don’t connect, its message is scattered, and its credibility is roughly on par with an email from a Nigerian prince. Borg has inherited a battered old jalopy of a party, and now he’s expected to drive it to victory. Trouble is, the steering wheel’s loose, the brakes don’t work, and half the passengers think they should be driving instead.

The next few months will be brutal. If Borg doesn’t stamp his authority fast, the sharks in his own party will eat him alive while Labour sits back, feet up, watching the fireworks. His win was historic. But unless it’s followed by an actual vision and some serious competence, the PN hasn’t been reborn – it’s just bought itself a bit more time before the next funeral.