Tony Gallienne: ‘We are struggling to develop a new social contract for living together’

If there was not already a book called ‘I Think You’ll Find It’s a Bit More Complicated Than That’, it would have been a fitting title for Tony Gallienne’s latest tome about Guernsey.

Our island is the way it is for complex reasons. Our biggest challenges have no simple solutions. Tony’s book comes as close as any to explaining why.

‘There is too much noise and not enough coherence or understanding in public discourse. We will try to clear away some of that confusion and fill in some of the gaps…,’ he writes in the book’s prologue.

The book’s breadth is impressive, too, sweeping through all the major public issues of our age – such as housing, finances, education and social welfare – across nearly 350 pages which educate as much as entertain.

The blurb for the book, which is actually called ‘Guernsey: How We Live Together’, states: ‘Guernsey has a unique culture of being in which humans live out their lives together. This book is about how we, living today, live those lives on this island: why we are what we are; why we think the way we think; why we do the things we do; how we decide on how we go into the future together.’

Books about Guernsey are common. But books like this about Guernsey are rare. The last was probably Tony’s previous book, ‘Guernsey in the 21st Century’, published 17 years ago. He finished that one looking back on ‘10 to 20 years of undoubted success and advancement for our community’, but also warning ‘it may be that we will be unable to preserve the ever-increasing sense of wellbeing which we have enjoyed for the last two decades’.

The years since seem to have removed any doubts about that. At the start of his current book, Tony is clear that ‘this economic and social model has become progressively difficult to sustain, to the point where radical changes are needed’. It’s not that this is a more pessimistic book, because Tony retains his optimism that Guernsey can rise to its challenges, but it certainly reflects our more anxious and apprehensive mood of the mid-2020s.

‘I think that is both global and local,’ he says. ‘Global because of wars, climate change, the lack of leadership in the West and a more multipolar world. Locally, our political ability to respond to our challenges hasn’t been that great over the past 20 years or so, and I think that has stored up some real problems for us.’

Tony is unimpressed by the current experiment with island-wide voting. ‘I mention the idea of trust,’ he says. ‘You can use trust as a basis for electing people only if you know them. Island-wide voting militates against that. It’s absurd.’

In the book he is critical of the culture of the present States, which he describes as ‘antagonistically factionalised, with hidden allegiances, and indulging in personality politics…creating a very fractious political scene’. Generally, however, the book resists bashing politicians, much less our political system. ‘In the politics section, I went out of my way to say I don’t think our politics is any worse than anywhere else, and is probably better than most frankly. And we’re highly democratic in the sense that, notwithstanding island-wide voting, we are close to our politicians.’

The purpose of Tony’s book – possibly with the exception of a chapter on education – is not to make judgments about decisions he considers right or wrong, or to hold anyone to account for them, or to suggest what might have been done instead. For example, he writes: ‘The States term of 2020-25 was dominated by, on one side, the argument to raise more taxes to maintain service levels in the face of increasing demand, and on the other the argument to contain or cut costs. There is no right or wrong answer. It is a matter of values and priorities.’ He then takes the reader through as good a guide as exists anywhere for how to think about those values and priorities. He is more comfortable examining issues than trying to resolve them, discussing, explaining, informing, teaching even, and if these were the aims the book is a great success.

There are particularly perceptive and illuminating sections on Guernsey’s system of government, housing, social welfare and the island’s finances. Tony’s research is meticulous, and his description and analysis of political events and policymaking are almost faultless. I was in the room, quite literally, during some of the political events described and, although I didn’t see Tony there, parts of his book suggest he might well have been, so clearly and accurately does he describe how arguments developed and outcomes emerged.

There is something else about this book which strikes me as unique. The water which surrounds us can be a great strength. It allows us to insulate ourselves from some unpleasant developments which bedevil larger neighbours. But being an island, and sometimes insular, can also be a great weakness. In particular, it tricks us into believing that everything is local – every success, every setback, every problem, every solution. I don’t know whether it’s intentional, but ‘Guernsey: How We Live Together’ helps to explain why that thinking is naive, especially in politics and economics. Guernsey’s political system is hard to negotiate not because of Guernsey’s political system but because political systems everywhere are hard to negotiate. Demands on public spending in Guernsey are increasing not because of Guernsey’s approach to public spending but because of demographic changes throughout the Western world. Guernsey’s economic growth is sluggish but, at least in part, not because Guernsey’s economy is especially weakening but because economic growth is harder to maintain in advanced economies, especially when hit by the numerous international shocks of recent years. The book does not recoil from demanding more flexibility, courage and wisdom from our politicians, but by linking some of Guernsey’s challenges to global problems the reader is left clearer about the limitations on our politicians and encouraged to be more realistic about what to expect from them.

Tony started to think about writing this second book during the first Covid lockdown, in 2020, the year of the last general election.

‘First, I work out the overall structure of the book and the topics I’m going to approach. Basically, the first two years were research, lots of reading and obviously observing the local scene, which one continues right through really. I was aiming for about 100,000 words. I have a discipline of a certain number of words every week. I gave myself a year to write the book and then six to nine months to edit and polish it, to publish it ahead of Christmas this year and ahead of the next general election.’

Tony says the ‘key framing concept’ of his book is the social contract – ‘how we agree to live together as harmoniously as possible for the benefit of all, to provide mutual social benefits in the form of, for example, health care and education, and to give people freedoms to follow their own course in life’.

Our social contract is in a greater state of flux than it has been for a long time, says Tony. ‘Longer lives, falling birth rates and sluggish growth are stretching the post-war social contract to breaking point. That is why we have a tax issue and a population issue. Since the Second World War, we have seen immense progress across a wide range of fronts, but our existing social contract is now struggling to manage the downside of this progress.

‘The tensions in society today are driven by the fact that our existing social contract is based on a set of assumptions that are no longer relevant. That it would be the men who went out to work and the women who stayed at home to look after the children; that people would stay married until death; that school education to 14 or 15 would be enough for the work that most people would do as an adult; that people would work for one employer, at most two or three, through their lives; and that at 65 there would be only a few years left for retirement.

‘But social contracts have to evolve, and in practice most social contracts are reformed in stages and over decades as a result of continuous dialogue, pressures and trends. What we are finding disconcerting is that perhaps our social contract, the way we organise things, is being forced to go through a more rapid and fraught change than we are used to.’

The book explores two other ideas which must have been chosen carefully because they brilliantly explain many of Guernsey’s challenges as we enter the second quarter of the 21st century. One is the progress trap – the condition societies experience when, as they advance, they create new problems which they have neither the resources nor political will to solve for fear of short-term losses. I am not sure there is a better explanation of the inertia which has plagued Guernsey politics for probably close to 25 years now. The other is the second curve – the need to change while the going is still good rather than awaiting decline when desperation and complacency might influence decision making. ‘That is the struggle we are in the midst of,’ writes Tony.

These ideas help the reader understand better why our island community, whose remarkable prosperity has required adapting to new opportunities in the past, now seems to have made major change so much harder. Coincidentally, I was speaking to Tony only days before States members will gather for their fourth debate in three years about how to deal with the greatest set of problems in public finances the island has faced for decades. The previous three debates ended inconclusively. Everyone expects the same this time. But, let’s face it, collectively we, the public, are not exactly encouraging deputies to be bold and courageous. ‘Perhaps they [the public] have to face a crisis,’ says Tony. ‘You know, it has to be in their face before they will reluctantly accept that something has to give. And the leadership has to accept that as well.’

I have long wondered whether our apparently growing scepticism of change is influenced by a rise in nostalgia. Did people in the 1970s really believe Guernsey was better in the 1920s in the same way that so much of our public conversation today seems to imply that Guernsey was better in the 1970s than it is now? I doubt it. ‘The issue is housing. That’s the fundamental. That’s screwing up everything,’ says Tony.

In the book, he touches on this point about nostalgia largely in the context of inequality. ‘Fifty years ago, the rungs of the ladder were close and the ladder short. Today, the rungs are wider apart, some rungs are missing, and the ladder is longer.’ That may be one of the most important paragraphs in the whole book.

‘The promise for the post-Second World War generation was greater social mobility. In the decades of the 1950s through to the 1970s, the ability to buy a house on only a multiple of three or four times a single wage was possible, and wealth inequality was modest. Today, wealth inequality is significantly greater as a result of the finance industry, the influx of very wealthy people, and the rise in house prices which has particularly benefitted that 1950s generation whose children will inherit that bounty. The next generation is therefore inheriting baked-in inequality in terms of access to housing and wealth and, as a consequence, decreased social mobility.’

This is a balanced book. There is as much time spent exploring Guernsey’s undoubted social and economic progress as its difficulties. In places it is quite uplifting. But Tony’s conclusion is one of uncertainty.

‘We are struggling to develop a new social contract for living together and unclear of the path to take,’ he says.

His book is essential for anyone who wants to understand why.

• Guernsey: How We Live Together is available now at Writer’s Block and The Lexicon.