Labour wants to project a new beginning, a new start of sorts, so I accepted the party’s courteous invitation to the launch of its latest policy publication last Monday with a keen eye for any signs of newness in the air.

At the event held at The Carriage Restaurant, just a few doorsteps away from the General Workers’ Union headquarters, I was all out in search of new blood, new faces, new slogans, new policies, new Labour.

The name of the latest document to come out of the Labour machine exudes this kind of newness – Pjan ghal Bidu Gdid (Plan for a New Beginning) – an update of Labour’s policies in all sectors of the country. But leafing through these 648 pages it’s like a déjà vu of already-read statements and slogans, some made public three years ago when the party started publishing its first policy documents. The fruit of “over 2,000 hours of discussions” and “over 300 meetings held in Malta and Gozo”, according to Sant.

The Times wrongly translated its title into a “Plan for a Better Start” – as if there was a false start or something. Admittedly, there is a race: it has just started and Alfred Sant’s party is in full gear creating events and campaigns in the run up to the election.

Alas, that’s as new as it gets – a compilation of individual reports bound together in a fat book that we found waiting for us instead of the menus on the restaurant tables. The only thing I could say upon seeing the book was that Sant still holds the personal record for the lengthiest book in Melitensia – his aptly named novel La Bidu La Tmiem is 890 pages long.

The second thing that came to mind was that, after all, this might be a new way for a party to offer lunch to a crowd of journalists, opinion makers and other creatures: a political menu in which the appetiser could be some marinated “inizjattiva” with a tinge of “wens”, followed by a first course of “xoghol” with “harsien” as a sideplate and a full plate of grilled “dinjità” as main course.

As we waited for the leader to arrive, more and more people kept coming, cramming the room and rendering the air-conditioning useless. This was not going to be one of the usual sermons to the converted, rather an ecumenical service open to party atheists. Fr Joe Borg was there after years of vilification by the Labour spin machine; Emmanuel Micallef was there too, despite his exile from GWU; Godfrey Grima was there again although he always enjoyed guru status with both parties. And there were two RTK journalists, three from The Times, and Lou Bondì – that’s it, Lou Bondì, the good old grandson of Nanna Olga, sporting a cool white open shirt.

And guess what! Lou was seated right on the head table, between Sant and Jason Micallef, with Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi on one side, two RTK journalists facing him, and Silvio Debono, a former Xandir Malta journalist and media consultant specialising in restructuring. But there was no sign of Peppi Azzopardi, Lou’s business partner, for whom no invitation was sent from the Labour leadership. Jason told Lou that only one person from each organisation was invited, but a cursory glance at the guests revealed that this was sheer bollocks. He should have found a smarter excuse, although Lou didn’t seem to mind that much.

Apparently the organisers were not too happy with the seating arrangements, with guests spread out all over the place on five or six different tables surrounded by Labour MPs when they were supposed to be seated on, at most, three tables.

Labour functionaries were blowing their top with the heat that was killing them: they were given “instructions” to wear full suits but the dress code was communicated to none of the guests. The advantage of such a mixed dress code is that you realise immediately when you’re talking to a party man even if you have never seen or heard of him before.

Facing me on my table was Stefan Buontempo, Labour’s spokesman on housing.

“So where’s your piece, Stefan?” I asked him leafing through the book.

“There’s no section on housing,” he said.

“Labour has no section on housing?” I asked flabbergasted, as if property prices were not the number one problem afflicting our society.

“Our housing policies are interspersed in various chapters,” he said, almost apologetically.

Next to him was Silvio Parnis, the spokesman on old people and geriatric issues and presenter of the TV programme M’Intix Wahdek. He has a knack for cracking jokes, but to be honest most of them are so insipid you’d rather be dining alone.

Sant’s speech was somehow straight, businesslike and ultimately pointless. He spoke of improving what’s good and changing the bad – increasing economic growth to five per cent annually and raising the number of tourists to 1.6 million, uprooting corruption and promoting efficiency.

Costings, by the way, will come later.

By the end of lunch, it was clear that that was the most we would get from the party’s new wave of newness. But the best was yet to come. As people started leaving, one by one, and Alfred Sant came shaking hands with every one of us, I ended up with my colleague Kurt Sansone on Jason Micallef’s table as he was downing more wine and liquor with Lou.

Jason is a fine drinking buddy. He can be funny and can take a good joke, particularly over a glass of wine. Lou and Jason seemed so much at ease together you would almost forget that his company, Where’s Everybody, was fiercely boycotted by Labour a couple of years ago.

“Give me a thousand Lou Bondis but not one Peppi Azzopardi,” Micallef said at one point.

I look at Kurt to make sure I was hearing well – alcohol can be a bit tricky – but the glint in his eyes confirmed to me I had just experienced the quote of the month. Micallef’s objection to Peppi, from what I could gather, was that he made himself a participant in the discussions he hosts on Xarabank by expressing his opinions, hence “biasing the programmes”. That’s not what Lou does, according to Micallef.

One thing led to another. We spoke about Deputy Leader Michael Falzon’s quaint antics of holding a holy picture of the Virgin Mary in his pocket and declaring it in front of cameras, while Jason listened with glee.

“Oh come on, don’t tell me you believe that’s true,” Lou said.

“Of course it is, don’t you watch the news Lou?” I told him.

“What? Did he do that on the news?”

“Yep. In front of the cameras.”

“Oh my God.”

Yeah.

Then we spoke about Sant’s eyelid surgery and the way Joe Saliba tried making fun of him during the general council with Jason present among the audience and the Net TV cameras focusing on him.

“I couldn’t believe they would stoop so low,” Jason said.

“Come on, I don’t believe it was intended,” Lou said.

“Of course it was; it was all choreographed. I was on the big screen just as Saliba was talking of facelifts, and that Sunday’s Mument had a cartoon referring to the issue.”

“Oh really? Then that’s another thing altogether,” he said finally agreeing with Jason.

Let a thousand Bondis bloom, then, as good old Mao would have put it. That might be a new beginning for Labour, but not quite new for the country.

See Raphael Vassallo’s column page