Ready for action?

BACK in 2016, the first routine business meeting of the newly-elected States ended at 12.39 on its first day.

Almost to the minute, so did the 2020 equivalent States meeting on 4 November. A clear case of plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Or was it?

The word ‘change’ served as a bellwether for the recent general election and the subsequent distribution of leadership and membership places on States committees, so we are entitled to look for it.

Let’s start at the top. The new ‘chief minister’ had made an earlier promise that he would deliver leadership along the Churchillian lines of ‘action this day’. There is a danger in identifying oneself with substantial historical figures, not least that of offering a very personal hostage to fortune. The question arises: will our version of Churchillian leadership be of the Winston Spencer kind or will it be more akin to Frank Spencer? If the latter, we can console ourselves that in our ‘deputy chief minister’ we have the ideal Betty to sort things out (readers under the age of 40 will probably have no idea what I am on about; if so, just Google ‘Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em’ and all will become clear). An early message delivered in the P&R president’s statement was that within the 18 days following his election to that position, the slogan ‘action this day’ had been recast as ‘action (sort of) in around three months’. Similarly, the mantra ‘action not words’ was now ‘lots of talk about action until we know what to do’. To which I say, fair enough and sensible, it was a silly slogan anyway.

Meanwhile, we must let the new P&R members bed into their new roles as tsar of this and tsar of that. There is some sense in this approach to government. In 1976, Harold Wilson’s response to Britain’s worst drought for 200 years was to appoint Dennis Howell as ‘rain tsar’. It worked. Within days, so heavy was the rainfall that Wilson had to redeploy Howell as ‘flood tsar’.

With that in mind, the appointment of Deputy Helyar as ‘insolvency and bankruptcy tsar’ should fill us with foreboding. It might look good on his CV, but bearing in mind it received special mention as one of P&R’s top priorities, its message to business sounds more like the threat of ‘Fail and Bail’ than ‘Revive and Thrive’.

Deputy Soulsby has been appointed tsarina for a review of the civil service and government. I can hear the words of the legendary Brenda from Bristol: ‘You’re joking – not another one!’ In the second half of the last political term the senior echelons of our civil service were (management-speak alert) realigned on vertical rather than horizontal lines. Or it might have been the other way round for all that most States members could understand it. The effect was to restructure the support provided to political committees by the civil service and then require the democratically-elected government to adapt to the changes – or lump it. Some States members, such as me – and I believe Deputy Soulsby – were old-fashioned enough to think that it ought to have been the other way round.

Reforming the civil service is like changing the course of a supertanker equipped only with a paddle, so I wish Deputy Soulsby all power to her biceps for that undertaking. She has three months before reporting back to the States, so we can look forward to even more words about action in early February. Yet another restructuring of government may well be justifiable, but there is the danger that endless contemplation of our constitutional navel will lead to paralysing pain in our constitutional neck.

I am reminded of a certain French general who, in 1870, commanded a vital garrison that stood in the way of the invading Prussian army. Instead of preparing his force to defeat the enemy, he busied himself counting the stores in case there was a siege. It was classic displacement activity. The result was that the Prussians simply bypassed his garrison and France duly fell to the invader, leaving the disgraced general to console himself with the thought that at least he knew how many sacks of beans and carrots he had.

A second ‘state of the nation’ report was given by the president of Economic Development who, two weeks earlier when pitching for the job, had wooed States members with the promise that ‘I will throw money at it’, the ‘it’ being support for our finance industry. What was interpreted as an altruistic pledge of personal generosity certainly worked, and Deputy Inder was duly elected. Greatly encouraged, our new ED president now continued in similar vein. Guernsey Finance needed to secure more business for Guernsey companies, presumably from some of those nice countries with whom we share the planet, you know, fascist China, corrupt South Africa and those oil-rich Middle East states that are fond of stoning women to death. Well, if we don’t do it, Jersey and the Isle of Man will – so goes the justification.

Anyway, Guernsey Finance needed more money, so the ED president intended to throw more money at it. But it turned out that it wasn’t his money he would be throwing at it after all, it was yours and mine. We can always rely on each Assembly producing at least one member of the awkward squad who will spoil the party by asking inconvenient questions. On cue, up jumped Deputy Trott, who just happens to be chairman of Guernsey Finance.

‘Where’s the money coming from?’ he asked.

‘Not a clue,’ was what the ED president should have replied, but instead he gave us an impersonation of a navigator who has lost his compass and can’t see any stars to guide him. His response took us on a meandering, seemingly-endless journey to nowhere in particular from which we learned little other than it was not his money he would be throwing around, the gist being that there must be some money somewhere and when he found it he would throw it. Who said Corbynism was dead?

But there was sensible, grown-up stuff, too. For many years the late Roger Perrot and I campaigned for royal assent for our legislation to be signed off by the Lt-Governor on behalf of the Crown rather than by the Privy Council, thus making us less vulnerable – but not completely invulnerable – to delay from political interference in Whitehall. Now it seems we are heading that way.

Deputy St Pier’s appointment to lead a new Guernsey Investment Authority was another good move. He is best placed to ensure that the expert investment advice that has produced excellent returns for our liquid assets for many recent years will continue and not become stifled by in-house P&R bureaucracy.

Perhaps the hardest portfolio has been handed to P&R newcomer Deputy Mahoney. As if taking the political lead on pay and conditions of service for States employees were not sufficient a challenge (especially having already asserted in his election manifesto that our health workers are underpaid – oops!), the gallant deputy has also undertaken to get a grip of States property. I have yet to meet a States deputy of any generation who had any idea of what properties are owned by the States, where they are or what they are worth, let alone know what we should do with them beyond continuing wastefully to exclude them from our book of assets. With such a clear mission, it will be easy to judge his success or failure.

I congratulate Deputy Gollop on being the first member of this Assembly to utter the pretentious but right-on term ‘high net worth individuals’ when referring to the rich; we can always rely on him to use several words when one or two would do. I also congratulate him on becoming Father of the House by virtue of his length of service; it was good to see him laying a Remembrance wreath at the war memorial on behalf of States members, looking very smart and not a little proud.

I cannot sign off without recording the latest example of the own goals for which Deputy Meerveld has a special talent.

During questions to the new Economic Development president, and very much in the negative mode for which he has a well-earned reputation, Deputy Meerveld provocatively invited the ED president to agree that the first 100 days of the dynamic, business-focused new ED committee promised to provide a welcome contrast to the alleged unproductive first 100 days of the previous committee in 2016.

Bless his cotton socks, he had forgotten that it was two of his favourite colleagues, deputies Ferbrache and Dudley-Owen, who had been respectively president and member of Economic Development at that time. It was Deputy Trott who took pleasure in reminding him of this, and I am left with the thought that some members of the new Assembly may come to regret leaving the previous P&R vice-president unemployed on the bank benches.