In the 40 odd years for which there are polling records in Malta, no political party has won a general election when its leader trailed his opponent. It’s not difficult to understand why. The cunning of democratic politics lies in making it easy for people to vote for your leader and difficult to vote for his or her opponent.

It’s why Donald Trump won in 2016, with 13 per cent of his vote coming from former Barack Obama voters. They could roll their eyes at some of what he said but Hillary Clinton switched them off. And it’s why Trump undermined himself in 2020: Joe Biden stayed out of his way, pursuing Hillary’s same electoral strategy, county by county, while managing to remain inoffensive.

In 2008, Obama squared the circle of promising change while convincing enough voters that they had nothing to worry about. In 2012, facing much voter dissatisfaction, he persuaded enough voters to worry about his opponent, Mitt Romney.

Ronald Reagan made eyes roll with his corny cheerfulness, Margaret Thatcher with her bombast, Bill Clinton with his loquacity.

All charismatic, none of them ever commanded the support of an absolute majority of voters. They were divisive but still won landslide general elections because their opponents’ supporters left them in droves, even if not crossing over to the other side.

George W. Bush made eyes roll more than those three combined. But his first opponent, Albert Gore, squandered victory because he repelled voters with his intellectual arrogance, despite having political vision. And Bush’s second opponent, John Kerry, repelled voters with his insincerity.

Both Tony Blair and David Cameron roused the ire of some of their party faithful for betraying this or that party principle. But they managed to attract the quiet, middle-of-the-road voters, which was sufficient for electoral victories in a landscape where their opponents were tearing themselves apart.

So it’s not the absolute levels of mistrust that count. It’s the comparative level. Often, the difference in level is associated with differences in the kind of mistrust. It’s against such benchmarks we should interpret the falling levels of trust in Robert Abela and Bernard Grech. A loss of trust in a prime minister is not the same as it is in an opposition leader.

Many voters find Abela to be insincere. His histrionics make eyes roll. But he does not induce despair, as Adrian Delia did with a core segment of the Nationalist Party vote. Nor does he make significant swathes of core voters switch off, as Grech does today.

The respective consequences of falling levels of trust are also different.

Most people don’t think Abela’s Labour believes in anything except preserving power and crony self-enrichment. But though this makes some Labourites swear they will send a vehement message at the European elections next year, there is no significant number crossing over to the other side.

There is factional rancour in the ranks but the wheels are not yet coming off the Labour juggernaut. Labour hasn’t lost the will to govern. Its opportunists are not changing sides. They still take victory for granted and act accordingly.

A change in leader, in itself, won’t pull the PN out of its current predicament- Ranier Fsadni

With the Nationalists, the anger is working its way differently.

The mistrust is based on mutual recrimination not just disappointment. Discipline has dissolved. Successive leaders’ attempts to display strength ended up exhibiting weakness. Morale is low. So is hope that the next general election can be won. And so the opportunists act accordingly.

In both parties, loyal voters perceive the drift. But it’s one thing for a governing party to reach the end of the road, it’s another for one in opposition. Principled Labourites can hope for an eventual period of opposition to be able to reform and regroup; principled Nationalists are losing hope that its MPs are learning anything from the long spell in opposition.

Trust barometers are useful but also limited. They tend to obscure two factors.

First, if opposition parties can survive their nadirs, they can recover quickly and unexpectedly.

In the UK, after the fourth successive Conservative election victories of 1992 and 2019, Labour seemed to face electoral oblivion. But, in 1997, Labour buried the Conservatives and, in 2023, after three years of dispiriting opposition, Labour’s victory at the next general election seems almost certain.

Second, trust barometers don’t reflect the difficulty of being opposition leader, not least in Malta.

It’s difficult to be heard, especially with Labour’s authoritarian attitude to public broadcasting. You are more likely to get noticed when you gaffe or internal conflicts are made public.

You’re called negative if you criticise what the government is doing without offering a detailed alternative. If you do offer a good plan, the government simply steals it and gets the credit.

Your detailed policies are never read. If you have a grand vision for institutional reforms, you risk being called out of touch with bread-and-butter issues. But if you offer neither one nor the other, then you’re perceived as lightweight.

If you appeal only to your voter base, you’re accused of being sectarian and inward-looking. If you appeal beyond your base, to voters and special interest groups on the other side, then some of your own activists will accuse you of having no sense of the party’s roots.

So, falling trust ratings for a leader are not necessarily about the person, or exclusively about the person. They’re about leadership more broadly. The leadership exercised down the ranks, from MPs to activists, makes a huge difference for the trust that the party leader is able to generate.

What this means is that a change in leader, in itself, won’t pull the PN out of its current predicament. Its crisis is not caused by ideology, nor by voters who are indifferent to corruption.

Until the PN itself behaves as though its leading members trust each other, voters can’t be blamed for not trusting them.