Robert Abela summons Alex Borg to Labour HQ: inside Malta’s most unlikely political tête-à-tête

Prime Minister Robert Abela has extended a surprise invitation to firebrand radio host and self-styled “voice of the common man” Alex Borg for a closed-door meeting at Labour Party headquarters in Ħamrun, sending political tongues wagging across the islands and sparking a thousand WhatsApp voice notes before lunch.

The summons, delivered by text message on Tuesday evening and leaked to this newsroom within minutes, asks Borg to “discuss the concerns of ordinary Maltese families” over kafè and kannoli in the PL’s iconic “Ħamrun war-room” this Thursday afternoon. While the agenda remains officially vague, sources inside the party say Abela wants to “take the temperature” of Malta’s most influential non-politician ahead of what is expected to be a heated Budget debate and a possible spring election.

Borg, 42, a former fireworks-shop owner turned Facebook Live phenomenon, commands a nightly audience that rivals national television. Broadcasting from a converted garage in Żabbar—walls plastered with vintage Cisk signs and a life-size cardboard cut-out of Dom Mintoff—he mixes village-gossip, anti-corruption tirades and recipes for rabbit in garlic. His catchphrase “U iva, mhux hekk?” has become a national shrug; his face, complete with trademark bushy moustache, stares from bumper stickers on every third Toyota Starlet.

For Labour, courting Borg is both savvy and risky. The party’s grassroots still revere the “ħaddiem” ethos minted in Mintoff’s day, yet Abela’s glossy administration is increasingly seen as remote from the alleyways of Paola and the fishing boats of Marsaxlokk. By sitting down with Borg—who prides himself on never having worn a tie—Abela hopes to re-claim the populist pulse without ceding control of the narrative. “It’s straight from the Mintoff playbook,” one veteran canvillor told Hot Malta. “Invite the loudest voice inside the tent, feed him, flatter him, then send him home with a story to tell.”

The meeting also throws a spotlight on Labour HQ itself, a 1960s townhouse whose green shutters and chipped Labour-star emblem have witnessed every major Maltese turning point since independence. Inside, the air is thick with past cigarette smoke and present ambition; photos of past leaders—Mintoff in a hard-hat, Mifsud Bonnici clutching a red rose, Muscat sleeves rolled up—gaze down like patron saints. For many Maltese, crossing that threshold signals arrival: whether as candidate, trade-union firebrand or, in Borg’s case, the latest tribune of popular rage.

Opposition circles scoff that the Prime Minister is “panic-eating pastizzi” after Borg’s recent rants on utility bills and the price of ġbejną. Nationalist MP Mario Galea tweeted a mocked-up picture of Borg wearing a Labour beret with the caption “One of us soon?” Meanwhile, ADPD called on both men to live-stream the encounter, arguing that “back-room deals are so 1981.”

Yet beyond the memes, the invitation reveals deeper currents in Maltese political culture. Island society remains uniquely intimate; a chat-show host can still become king-maker because every listener has a cousin who knows his neighbour. Politics is still debated on doorsteps, not door-stops; the village band-club, not the boardroom, is the basic unit of persuasion. In that context, Abela’s gesture is less stunt than survival: a recognition that power still flows through the arteries of everyday gossip, and that whoever channels the bar-side grumbling of Valletta’s Strait Street ultimately shapes the vote.

For Borg’s followers—many of whom feel left behind by the construction boom and the stag-party economy—the meeting offers a sliver of hope. “Maybe someone will finally listen to the pensioner who can’t afford rent in Sliema,” commented one woman under Borg’s livestream. Others fear co-option. “The moment he steps inside, they’ll brand him one of them,” warned a regular caller known only as “Toni tal-Għaxaq.”

Whatever transpires over Thursday’s steaming cups of Kunserva-koloured tea, the photograph of Abela and Borg shaking hands beneath the Labour star will join the gallery of Maltese moments that linger longer than headlines. Whether it heralds a new alliance or merely buys temporary quiet, the image will be memed, parodied and, ultimately, woven into the island’s restless, romantic memory of itself—proof that, in Malta, politics still happens face to face, one kannolo at a time.