Beyond ethics and the law, there is humanity Dr Muscat

When Tonio Borg as Home Affairs minister chose to send migrants onto a flight back to their country of origin some years back, when most of these migrants were fleeing murder and death in their country, I could not but condemn Tonio Borg and his government.

It was against international law then and it is still illegal today.

But hitting out at Tonio Borg was easy.  He came from a party which intrinsically or at least according to the colour code of the ideological litmus test, came closer to opposing migration and diversity.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozsy and former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi did the same with pushbacks and won the support of the right-wing electorate that they so badly needed in their electoral games to demolish the far-right.

But Muscat needs none of this. He hails from a supposedly social democratic party, one with a nine-seat majority.

Yet Muscat knows that being tough with migrants will win him support from a typically hard-core, xenophobic working class and the loony right, and that this will enrage the middle of the road who supported him, those best described as electoral switchers.

It will also leave 'us' in the media with little or no reason to give allowances to a Prime Minister who has opted for dumping his political principles into the sea from where the poor African and black migrants reach our shores.

He has also offered us an insight into his understanding of humanity and his consideration for the less fortunate.

Since Tonio Borg's days, the European Court of Human Rights has decried pushbacks as illegal. Dr Muscat's decision to ignore the rule of law is not only worrying but utterly reprehensible.

This is a shameful act and perhaps a new page to Muscat's style of politics. It continues to shed light on the Labour party's position on migration, and the decision by the Prime Minister to jump on the national bandwagon of xenophobia.

When Muscat next waves his flag as a movement of progressives, I will be the first one to remind him of what a bad joke it was.