The sooner the Nationalist Party realises it has little chance of currying favours with the hunters’ lobby, the better its chances of inching closer to the Labour Party on support.

For too many years, the hunters have held the two main parties to ransom, resorting to blackmail and threatening to electorally castigate any which failed to pledge (more) concessions.

For an election or two, that threat could have possibly swayed the final vote. But since Malta joined the EU, the hunting issue should really have transcended political lobbying. It is now a matter of browbeating versus basic decency. News reports of rampant lawlessness among hunters, with few law-enforcement officers to police the abuse, have almost become a footnote.

The vociferous lobby feels entitled to do as it pleases, its members sometimes resorting to threats towards those who come in their way. Why should we be surprised with such a sense of entitlement in a country where the minister responsible for the hunting regulator is not the environment minister but is himself a hunter?

The government’s decision to sign off an area five times the size of Buskett to the hunting lobby to manage has sparked widespread anger. It is symptomatic of a government that has treated the environment as a cash cow at the expense of the well-being of its citizens.

There is little indication that Robert Abela wants to change tack and this could be to the PN’s benefit.

The hunting demographics have traditionally favoured Labour and that means many hunters are entrenched and reluctant to switch political allegiance.

Knowing the hunting lobby was behind him, Joseph Muscat went one step further and skilfully sold the concept that he was the right man for social liberalism. On matters like LGBTIQ, Muscat did not sit on the fence and, instead, steered the charge and championed change.

Bernard Grech needs to do the same by revamping the party into an all-encompassing pro-environment movement determined to stamp out hunting abuse.

The misconception that hunters can still sway an election is long gone. Let’s remember, the 2015 spring hunting referendum was only lost by a wafer-thin majority and that only happened because Muscat intervened to throw a last-minute lifeline to the hunters. In reality, that was the only election Muscat almost lost. Let’s remember, the majority still voted for EU membership, despite the hunters’ threats at the time.

While Grech condemned the way the government concocted the Miżieb/Aħrax deal behind people’s backs, he has still not committed a new PN government to scrapping it. This is the first opportunity for him to take leadership on an issue that has angered many. Grech cannot just listen to those MPs who simply seek to placate hunters in their district while losing sight of the bigger picture. He has a chance to be the voice of tens of thousands of law-abiding citizens who have had enough of bullying tactics and politicians sitting on the fence.

While the hunting lobby is not small in number, Malta has seen a major boost in environmental awareness in the last five years or so. Surveys show that the young, the cosmopolitan, the liberals and the tertiary-educated are anti-hunting.

The PN should not underestimate the dramatic change in sentiment among PL voters. A good number of the government’s vocal critics on the environment and hunting are activists who openly declare they are traditional left-wingers who voted Labour in the past.

Together with trekkers, cyclists and others desperate to see a change, these people feel orphaned in a political system which castigates small parties.

Together, they could provide the base of a counter-hegemony in the face of Labour’s electoral dominance.