On 27 February 1955, Malta was in the middle of a three-day general election (26–28 February) that would end with Dom Mintoff’s Labour Party winning a clear majority, and with it, the mandate that would carry Mintoff into Castille as Prime Minister for the first time a couple of weeks later. He was sworn in on 11 March 1955. To understand why this moment mattered, you have to picture Malta in the mid-1950s: still a British colony, still shaped by the aftershocks of war, and e

The year 2017 was a very particular year for Maltese politics. Today marks the anniversary of when Prime Minister Joseph Muscat brought a foreign delegation to Serkin in Rabat to eat pastizzi, like locals do. The images travelled: dignitaries in suits, no cutlery. It looked spontaneous. It wasn’t. It was soft power by design. A visual pitch for a country that wanted to believe that everything was “business as usual”. However, the backdrop matters. 2017 was not a calm year. Th