Future Guernsey expects to develop into registered party
PUBLIC support for political parties is growing, according to the founders of Future Guernsey, which launched last night.
Future Guernsey has been set up as a political movement, but it expects to develop into a registered party and field candidates at June’s general election.
The new organisation presented its ideas to a packed-out invited audience at the Performing Arts Centre. It claimed that research it had carried out with more than 250 respondents earlier this year indicated that there was now more support than opposition to the idea of political parties locally.
There was support for parties among nearly half of respondents who participated in focus groups and a telephone survey. About a quarter were opposed and the remaining quarter were neutral.
‘Over the coming months, we will create a policy-focused manifesto, and encourage a new generation of deputies who act with integrity and ability to pledge their support for Future Guernsey,’ said its political adviser Gavin St Pier.
In 2020, two parties, the Partnership of Independents and the Guernsey Party, won a total of 16 seats, but neither required members to vote on party lines even on key issues in the States Assembly.
The Partnership was later dissolved and the Guernsey Party was shattered by defections.
Future Guernsey has indicated that candidates elected under its banner in 2025 would be expected to vote on party lines in six areas where it will offer an extensive policy platform – housing, health, education, the economy, public finances and climate change.
‘We know that without clear and defined agreement on key policy areas, our island’s government ends up in a cycle of inertia,’ said Deputy St Pier.
‘We cannot afford another wasted term of government rehashing the same old arguments. The time for change is now.’
He identified assisted dying and cannabis laws as two issues among many on which there would be no party line and deputies would be free to vote as they wished.
‘We envisage that deputies will retain the right to vote independently on issues outside of our policy platform and we have chosen this approach because we support independent thinkers,’ he said.
Deputy St Pier hoped that Future Guernsey’s new approach would attract ‘high-calibre candidates’ and ‘team players’.
The group’s research, which it undertook in August, included asking people to identify a few key issues which they believed should be priorities for the States.
Housing topped the list, followed by the island’s cost of living, healthcare, transport off the island, education, and young people leaving the island. Fewer than one in 10 respondents wanted priority given to changing the island’s political system, an issue set to be debated by the States next month. Tax policies, which have dominated the current States term, and economic growth made the list of priorities only in ninth and 10th place respectively.
Future Guernsey’s chairman John Hardie, a former television executive, claimed the new organisation’s approach had been shaped by its research findings.
‘Future Guernsey has been created as a direct response to what islanders have told us they want – an accountable, unified government that delivers policies essential to the long-term prosperity of all islanders,’ said Mr Hardie.
After the many false starts of political groupings and parties in recent years, Mr Hardie said Future Guernsey would be ‘an enduring political movement’ which focused on ‘the challenges facing the next generation’.
