Malta’s prime minister was expected to resign last night amid an acute political crisis precipitated by the murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Joseph Muscat was on the brink of quitting, according to The Times of Malta, in what would cap a tumultuous week for the EU’s smallest member.

He has been under immense pressure to leave for days, with nightly protests outside parliament in Valletta, the capital.

“Out, out, out,” Paul Caruana Galizia, one of the murdered journalist’s three sons, wrote on Twitter.

Simon Busuttil, a former opposition leader, said that the departure of the prime minister was “both inevitable and imperative for our country to start a desperately needed cleaning up and healing process after six and a half years of lies, corruption and an assassination that killed one of us.”

Roberta Metsola, an MEP with the opposition Nationalist Party, wrote: “If only Daphne was alive to see that even after they assassinated her, she brought the criminals down in disgrace.”

Mrs Caruana Galizia was blown up by a car bomb as she left her home outside Valletta, the capital, two years ago.

She had made many enemies through her widely-read blog, Running Commentary, which documented corruption and sleaze in the political and business worlds.