Muscat does Comino: hors d’oeuvres and a boat trip for the press

Welcome to Comino: population four... five? It doesn't matter. According to Labour leader Joseph Muscat, this is yet another opportunity for him to labour his 'Malta for all' message with a visit to Comino's small family of siblings.

Miriam Dalli, who is aboard the swank 'Fernandes' for which the press has been invited on to tag along with Joseph and Michelle Muscat, says "the press is well taken care of" with waiters on board serving the reporters hors d'ouevres.

Later on, they will hear the Labour leader in his first mass meeting for 2013, in Gozo, a traditionally Nationalist stronghold that returns three MPs and is home to two ministers (three if you count Austin Gatt's family stock).

Muscat - buoyed by new surveys showing him in an unprecedented 11-point lead - is expected to harp on the main policy planks of the last week: his energy proposal for a new power station that he claims Labour can complete with the space of two years; and civil partnerships for gay couples.

In the meantime, Lawrence Gonzi in Gozo has been pledging to islanders there that a re-elected Nationalist government will be pushing ahead with a connecting bridge or tunnel that would create a permanent link between the two islands