Fortunato Mizzi, who was a lawyer at the time, strongly opposed these reforms, and in 1880, he set up the "Partito Anti-Riformista" (Anti-Reform Party).

[11] He and his followers also wanted a better constitution for the island, as the one imposed at the time had been granted by governor Richard More O'Ferrall in 1849, and gave the Maltese little power.

[13] In 1886, Fortunato Mizzi, together with Gerald Strickland (another anti-reformist at the time), went to London to demand a new constitution for the islands, which would give them representative government.

[citation needed] The two groups contested the first legislative elections of 1921 but in separate constituencies so as not to damage each other's chances.

However, after elections the UPM, which emerged as the largest Party in the Legislative Assembly, chose Labour as its coalition partner.

[citation needed] The party openly sided with General Franco's Nationalist army in the Spanish Civil War.

Their association with Italy, the wartime enemy, antagonised them with the electorate, and their leader Enrico Mizzi (son of Fortunato) was first interned and then exiled to Uganda during the War along with other supporters of the Party.

[11] Two subsequent elections were held in 1951 and 1953 where the Nationalists formed short-lived coalitions with the Malta Workers Party (which, over the years, eventually disintegrated).

Integration failed largely because Britain lost interest after the Suez fiasco and the constitution was again revoked in 1958 following massive disturbances over redundancies at the Malta Drydocks.

The Nationalists, led by George Borg Olivier won the 1962 elections, fought largely over the issue of independence and having as a backdrop a second politico-religious crisis this time between the Church and the Labour Party.

[citation needed] A wide-ranging programme of liberalisation and public investments meant the return to office with a larger majority in 1992.

The party won the 1998 elections convincingly, a feat that was repeated in 2003 following the conclusions of accession negotiations with the European Union in 2002.

[25] The Nationalist Party again suffered a loss in the European Parliament election of 2014 against the governing Labour Party by over 34,000 votes,[26] but managed to elect its third MEP for the first time since Malta's entrance in the EU, namely Roberta Metsola, David Casa and Therese Comodini Cachia.

[32] A new election for the leadership role was decided in which for the first time, paid PN supporters can vote as well as the executive.

The four candidates in the first round were Adrian Delia, Chris Said, Alex Perici Calascione and Frank Portelli.

[35] Roberta Metsola, a member of PN, was elected President of the European Parliament in January 2022 following the unexpected death of David Sassoli.

The Party would soon suffer its own internal crisis when Adrian Delia was voted out from his role as the leader of the party after the newsportal LovinMalta alleged that well informed sources told them that WhatsApp messages were sent between him and the alleged mastermind of Daphne Caruana Galizia's murder Yorgen Fenech.

This would culminate with Bernard Grech emerging as a challenger to Adrian Delia, who would in turn be election as the new leader of the PN.

[37] However, it would soon emerge that the WhatsApp leaks were very much greatly exaggerated by another MP Jason Azzopardi, who after Delia challenged Azzopardi to publish the hundreds of messages that he claimed to have with Fenech, would backtrack on his claim of Delia being in Fenech's pockets and signed a joint declaration in which they both reconciled.

In the 2022 general election, the party was again rocked by the fact that 4 major PN politicians would not run, in addition one of these politicians Mario Galea would speak up against the part be saying that other politicians close to the PN leadership 'made my life hell' and “I was made a disposable commodity... People close to the leadership also called out my mental health,” [41] Because of these many revelations regarding internal party politics, the PN suffered its third consecutive defeat in the 2022 general election.

The party recruited a non-binary member, Mark Josef Rapa, for their pro-LGBT group, FOIPN.