Picture the scene: my seven-year-old looking up at a new Labour Party billboard outside our house asking: “Mummy is that you?” It’s a sight to see, my face plastered across 12 feet.

I started to smile. “Don’t worry,” I said, “hope will always beat hate”, with a confidence that hid a natural unease. My 17-year-old, who will vote for the first time, jumped in: “No one my age is going to tune in to this negativity, we want to vote for something, not whatever this is meant to be.”

He is right.

Malta and Gozo are bigger than the hyper-partisanship that the prime minister has dragged the country into.

It is sad to watch him totally abandon the middle ground and shuffle from campaign stop to campaign stop appealing only to his base vote.

Every speech marked by screeching about an imagined enemy, calling our judges and magistrates terrorists, bussing people into half-built housing in an attempt at gerrymandering, intimidating journalists, bullying NGOs.

When called out on all his failures to defend the national interest, he blames “the establishment”.

As if he is not the very definition of the “establishment” he rails against. For all his faux champagne socialism, Che Guevara he is not.

It is a sign of panic by someone so weak, so far out of his depth, that it is no wonder that the strain is beginning to show. It is, I suspect, about his party possibly losing a seat in these elections.

That is why they have started to try to confuse people about our electoral system, that is why they spend all their time warning people not to vote for me with every excuse under the sun. They must be worried.

Malta and Gozo deserve real leadership. We deserve better. We deserve a national discussion on our 20 years of European Union membership and a sober, sombre assessment of where we have succeeded and of where we need to do better.

Our country should be proud of what we have done in the last two decades, we should be able to say that having a Maltese woman leading the European Parliament for the first time ever is a positive step for our country. It gives us a voice at a table that is louder than it has ever been.

It allows our flag to fly proudly wherever I go. We should be proud that we have led in Europe on issues from ensuring funding is made easily available, to pushing anti-SLAPP legislation.

Instead, the prime minister has made it his mission to reimagine the European Parliament as the enemy – so much so that his Broadcasting Authority threatened TV houses with sanctions should their reporting on me and the European Parliament not be exercised with “caution”.

It is unheard of. It promulgates the smallest possible world view but, sadly, it is in keeping with everything the prime minister has done in the last years.

Instead of grasping all the opportunities that this allows our country, the prime minister has descended into his Super One comfort zone, putting party over country at every possible opportunity.

It is a way of doing politics that only serves to encourage cynicism, that pushes people – young people especially – away from politics.

He thinks that if he is able to convince everyone that all politicians are the same, he wins. It is a strategy of negativity that will backfire.

The prime minister has descended into his Super One comfort zone, putting party over country- Roberta Metsola

It is designed for the extreme short term but does nothing to help this country move forward. It does nothing for families who want their lives to be a little bit easier, a little bit fairer or a little bit more secure. It does nothing to ensure a future for our young people here. It does nothing for our companies who find closed doors.

It does nothing for all those who do things properly and raise standards only to see a laughable attempt at any enforcement. It does nothing to solve our chronic traffic problems or address our infrastructure shortcomings.

Malta does not have to be defined by the challenges we face but our ability to adapt and to overcome them together. I want the world to see us not by the actions of those criminals who pose as politicians but by our ability to find justice.

Our size should not be an excuse for mediocrity and an “anything goes” mentality but used to our advantage for everyone’s benefit.

Despite, or, perhaps, because of, the daily onslaught of lies and propaganda, I refuse to give up on my country or to give in. The politics of hysteria is from a playbook from the past. When I speak to young people, I want them to be inspired, to look at public service as a force for good, as a way to enact positive change in our communities.

They don’t want to see the constant back-and-forth and candidates sniping from the sidelines. They want our MEPs to work together, to understand that they have a role to play that is bigger than an immediate headline. They want to believe.

That is my appeal: to work together for all of us. To defy the naysayers, to grasp all the potential that Europe has to offer our islands and to mitigate, together, all the instances that could impact our country and our way of life.

With your vote and your trust on June 8, I will continue to do just that.

This Thursday, May 30, join me at Argotti Gardens, Floriana at 7pm to show that we can do this together. To rally together for better, for the politics of hope. To stand up for the Malta and Gozo we all want to see. Together, there is nothing that we cannot do.

Roberta Metsola is the president of the European Parliament, an MEP for Malta and Gozo and candidate in the European Parliament elections of June 8.