Graham Bencini is the Nationalist Party’s spokesperson for finance. In a newspaper interview, a few days after Budget 2025 was announced, perhaps unknowingly, he confirmed how detached his party is from the concerns, needs and aspirations of the middle, lower-middle and low-income earners.

Asked for his reaction about the biggest tax cut in history, as announced in Budget 2025, he brushed it aside, stating that it would make little to no difference.

Bencini is a qualified accountant and a successful one, too. According to MPs’ declaration of assets, he is one of the top earners from among his MP colleagues. It would be fair to say that Bencini enjoys a high standard of living, and good luck to him. I honestly wish him further success in his profession.

But his reaction to the tax cuts shows the true colours of today’s Nationalist Party.

When Eddie Fenech Adami took over in the 1970s, the PN was clearly identified with high-income earners, ‘old’ money, high education and professionals. The working class was in its absolute majority Labour leaning.

Fenech Adami, together with the likes of Ugo Mifsud Bonnici, Guido de Marco, Fr Peter Serracino Inglott and Louis Galea, started to effect radical changes within the PN to reach out to Malta’s working class.

The PN changed its narrative, language and even policies. Eventually, its battle cry was ‘Qalbna mal-Ħaddiema’ (our heart, with the workers). It started to make significant inroads, and, in 1987, it was elected to government and maintained its winning streak until 2008, except for the 1996-1998 period.

Fenech Adami’s vision was for Malta to join the EU, and the PN campaigned heavily to convince different segments of Maltese society that membership meant new jobs, foreign direct investment, more educational opportunities and freedom of movement, among others. Its campaign was successful.

Then Lawrence Gonzi took over and the PN started to lose the plot. It taxed people heavily, especially middle and low-income earners. It increased water and electricity prices to never-seen-before levels. Inflation was high, unemployment went up, foreign direct investment hit rock bottom. In 2013, the PN lost heavily.

Simon Busuttil took over and it was more of the same.

Then, Adrian Delia came along and the party establishment saw him as a disruptor who would jeopardise their hold over the PN. The PN establishment had had enough and Delia was removed as PN leader. Today, he has lost all sense of pride and is busy rubbing shoulders with the very people who politically decapitated him. His choice.

Enter Bernard Grech and the PN suffers the biggest electoral loss in Malta’s political history. The man is simply unable to connect with the people. He doesn’t lead. He is led by a handful of people who created havoc under the Gonzi administration and are calling the shots to this very day.

The fact that under his weak leadership the PN is unable to come up with a pre-budget document is telling.

It is widely acknowledged that Grech is incompetent on economic matters and that, on its own, disqualifies him from being prime minister.

But the most striking aspect of the PN today is its inability to reach out, understand and empathise with the workers. The PN is so cut off from their daily needs and aspirations that whenever the Labour government stepped in with measures to help middle, lower middle and low-income earners, the PN either brushed them off as ‘ineffectual’, as Bencini recently did, or else criticised them as a waste of money.

This has happened frequently up to this day regarding tax cuts, water, electricity and fuel subsidies, the stability mechanism to cushion the impact of global inflation on food prices, higher pensions, higher children’s allowances, affordable housing, financial help for first-time property buyers ‒ Grech and the ‘I’m alright’ handful of MPs and power-behind-the-throne characters who call the shots within the party have rendered the PN irrelevant to workers.

The sad truth is that they pride themselves in being elitist. The PN has become a hostile environment for anyone who insists that it should ditch its elitist attitude and connect with the people.

Nigel Vella is a former head of communications of the Labour Party and a former deputy head of communications at the OPM.