T hey were hardly out of the gate and the knives were out on Bermuda's latest political party. Welcome, I suppose, Mr. Editor, to politics in Bermuda today.

They had not formally announced themselves and the Progressive Labour Party were all over them on their website. If I recall correctly members of the newest party were described as "the same old vitriolic voices who have long opposed the PLP ... a long history of being partisan, anti-PLP attack dogs desperate to regain power". Ouch. That was no welcome mat – and little doubt about where the PLP stood. The language was also quite the contrast, say, to the more temperate tone employed in the Throne Speech for instance. You had to wonder too, about the thinking behind the strategy: wouldn't it be wiser to make the enemy of my enemy my friend, especially when you may need all the friends you can make on controversial votes like that on gambling and amendments to the Human Rights Act?

But wait a minute, or two, or three. It wasn't long after those comments were posted on the PLP website that they were taken down. Deleted, I think, deliberately. That made more sense. A new message, or perhaps the nicer part of the original message, went up in their place. This time the three members were welcomed back into the House on the Hill "encouraging them to work with us ... and not to reflexively oppose the bold and progressive vision ... in the Throne Speech".

OK. That's much nicer. Like my grandmother used to say: you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar. I guess we can write off the first set of comments as Original Spin; the replacement set as a smarter shot at redemption. Only time will tell – and a couple of issues along the way – whether there has been a true change of heart or if it was just one of approach.

I don't know. Maybe it was both. Political parties certainly are capable of both. They also tend to be broad enough to try and cover a broad spectrum of views and, on top of that, as we all know, not everyone toes the party line all the time – and Bermuda is no exception. In fact, I think a lot of us, myself included, might be a lot more effective if we adopted more often the advice of the late US Senator Everett Dirksen who famously advised his colleagues to occasionally allow themselves "the luxury of an unexpressed thought".

I mean I should talk. To be fair, and balanced here, some of my people have issues with the three MPs too – and there's tip-toeing around the issue with which they have issues. They regard them as Bermuda's equivalent of modern-day carpetbaggers who have stolen for themselves seats in the House that do not belong to them. They ran and won on another party's platform. They did not earn their seats for their new party the old-fashioned way – by electoral endorsement.

Of course they did it because they could.

There is no right of recall in Bermuda, yet. There is no mechanism to force them back to the polls. They were also not the first. Many will recall former PLP MPs who formed another third party back in the 1980s while sitting in the House. Mind you, they had also been expelled from the PLP. There was also Dr. Paul de la Chevotiere before them, who crossed the floor of the House as a sitting MP from PLP to UBP, and then more recently Grace Bell, who went from UBP to PLP.

It happens, and members get to face up to their decisions at the next election.

In the meantime, Mr. Editor, I repeat what I meant last week but did not actually say, but will say this week. In politics, as in life, you work with what you've got. Welcome to the new House. Let the debates (not the games) begin. We start today with the Throne Speech and Reply.

THOUGHTDUWEEK: Language is the source of misunderstandings (Anotine de Saint-Expury). Use soft words and hard arguments (Old English Proverb).