We have reduced the gap. Try understand how a political party can celebrate a loss with a margin that is almost double it’s largest ever electoral win. But there’s more to it than that, it’s not only a big loss, but the PN with Alex Borg reversed the gains achieved in 2024.

In the 2024 elections, under the leadership of Dr Bernard Grech, the PN had managed to reduce the gap in votes with the Labour Party to 8,454 in the European Parliament election. In the Local Council elections, Dr Grech managed to reduce the gap to 20,255.

Despite this, Bernard Grech was removed as leader following a manoeuvre led by the Nationalist establishment based on survey results in which Simon Mizzi was involved, the strategist behind Alex Borg. Borg himself had led Adrian Delia to believe that he would support him after Grech’s resignation, only to break his word.

The Nationalist Party establishment believed that with Alex Borg it would manage to win the election by improving on the 2024 result. Alex Borg declared himself that he could win in just one month from snatching the leadership race from Adrian Delia.

However, in the General Election, instead of moving forward, the PN went backwards. The gap between the two parties increased to 21,721. This means an increase in the gap in favour of the Labour Party of 13,267 compared to the European Parliament election and of 1,466 compared to the Local Council election result.

Compared to the European Parliament election, the Labour Party increased three votes for every two votes gained by the Nationalist Party over the past two years. It is worth noting that after the 2024 election, Dr Bernard Grech had stated that the next step was for the PN to become an alternative government.

In 2024, Alex Borg had boasted about having turned the map of Gozo blue and declared that thanks to his work, the PN had obtained a majority of 1,127 votes in the Gozo district.

However, instead of building on this margin, after Borg became leader, the gap in Gozo dropped to 144 in the general election. This means that since becoming leader, Alex Borg performed worse in Gozo by 983 votes.

In fact, the increase in the gap in favour of the Labour Party that occurred between the 2024 Local Council election and the 2026 General Election appears to have taken place exclusively in Gozo. Out of the overall increase of 1,466 across all districts, Gozo alone accounted for an increase of 983 votes in favour of Labour. Thus, two-thirds of the increase in the gap over the last two years was due to Gozitan voters once again placing their trust in the Labour Party.

Alex Borg’s involvement in the campaign in Malta led to the weakening of the Nationalist Party machine compared to 2024. The new candidates in Gozo failed to impress and in fact obtained a very small number of votes. Together, they gathered around a third of a quota. It appears that a faction opposed to Alex Borg in Gozo concentrated its support on Frank-Anthony Tabone. The latter ended up being eliminated despite performing better for a long time in the counts than the establishment’s candidate, Beppe Galea, assistant to David Casa. After pressure, the establishment had to concede that Frank-Anthony Tabone be given a seat through the corrective proportionality mechanism.

Meanwhile, in the 8th district, Adrian Delia completely outperformed Beppe Fenech Adami, gaining four times the number of first-preference votes. Fenech Adami was elected only on the 22nd count, or the final count for that district. In the 9th district, he obtained fewer preferences than Eve Borg Bonello, Alex Perici Calascione, and Joe Giglio, and therefore was not elected there either. In the 2022 election, Fenech Adami had been the candidate with the highest number of preferences in the 8th district, clearly ahead of Delia. In the 9th district, he had received double the preferences of Eve Borg Bonello, who has now surpassed him significantly. Compared to 2022, Fenech Adami reduced his vote by around 13%. Despite this, he is considered one of those backing Alex Borg and is regarded as having far more influence than Nationalist MPs who obtained significantly more votes than him.

Meanwhile, it appears that the election of Alex Perici Calascione to Parliament means that Alex Borg now faces major difficulties in appointing Darren Carabott as a deputy leader. Borg had been hoping that Perici Calascione would not be elected again, but he succeeded in defeating candidates preferred by Borg. It is not yet known whether Borg will proceed with his plan to appoint another deputy leader.

If they are happy, we can be happy for them. But as a minimum they need to be honest with themselves, and even more so, their supporters.