As Victor Calleja reminded us in a Facebook post, Chris Fearne was touted as one of the best Labour had to offer – so much so, when you think about it, that he seems to have been positioned to take up the reins when Joseph Muscat went off to bigger and better things.
Well, that ship has sailed and no mistake.
To start with, Muscat’s hopes and aspirations in the European context have come a cropper and a half, with all that’s happened on his watch – there’s no feasible route open to him for European Commission glory now.
To be going on with, it is by no means a given that Muscat wanted Fearne to take up pole position in the race to succeed him, even if that race is not going to be run for some time now (barring something awful befalling Muscat – after all, we don’t know what the those pesky Magisterial Inquiries are going to unearth).
So there’s something to be said for the buzz that’s going around that this is why Fearne was thrown under the bus when he was shoved unceremoniously into a room to face Tim Sebastian, of Hard Talk fame. Not to put too fine a point on it, Fearne was abysmal – he squirmed around, looking and sounding like a particularly awful apologist for some tin-pot dictator from a Third World sink-hole, rather than a senior Minister of an EU country.
He either had no idea who Sebastian was and what reputation the man has, or he was forced into this and had no choice in the matter. I tend to think it was the latter – no-one with even half a brain cell can not know that Tim Sebastian is one of the best there is, someone who can skewer you with question after question and who will not be fobbed off with whines about there being insufficient evidence or about having to wait for the courts to make a finding.
My thinking was confirmed when at some point about four-fifths of the way into the train-wreck that was his interview, Fearne showed an iota of backbone when he asserted that it was not he who had signed the Vitals Healthcare contract. The knee-jerk reaction which prompted this was a clear indicator that he was there against his will and just itching to lash out.
So, Fearne, having been fed to the wolf, did the worm-like thing and tried to feed Konrad Mizzi to the same wolf, albeit ineptly.
It’s not that chucking mates over the side isn’t something that seems to come naturally to this bunch, either. Only a few days ago, an un-named source (yeah, well, did you expect Konrad Mizzi to sign his name to it or what?) put the blame for the mess Air Malta finds itself in squarely at the door of Edward Zammit Lewis.
This is pretty significant, when you think about it. Zammit Lewis is (was?) a good buddy of Joseph Muscat’s and anyone who can leak against him with apparent impunity must be quite secure in his own skin to risk it.
So now we have Muscat shoving Chris Fearne under a bus, Fearne feeding Konrad Mizzi to the wolves and Mizzi throwing Edward Zammit Lewis overboard, to say nothing of Evarist Bartolo setting himself up as a paragon of all virtues only to have the Police feel the collar of one of his trusty buddies.
And this is only what we poor mortals can see from the outside: can you imagine what must be going on in the minds of Chris Cardona, Owen Bonnici and Edward Scicluna, with all the tempests brewing in the areas they oversee?
They really must be wondering if there’s enough space in the lifeboat for all of them. Is the good ship Titanic about to hit an ice-berg that we can’t see yet?