Light in the darkness

TOMORROW I shall gladly celebrate the end of 2020. Politically and personally, I shall remember this year – as the Queen once said – as an annus horribilis.

It started with my wife helping to nurse a very close relative through the final weeks of her life. Two days after she died, the States, by a single vote, stopped the reforms to secondary education on which my committee had been working, with frequent States support, for more than two years. Then we reluctantly had to impose the most draconian control measures since the Occupation, including closing schools to almost all students, as we fought the most serious global pandemic in 100 years. Our lockdown worked better than anyone dared hope, but Covid-19 has done immense damage to public finances, turning a surplus of tens of millions in 2019 into a deficit of tens of millions in 2020. Like so many others, we had to cancel our family’s annual summer holiday in France. Then, in a single electoral cycle, I went from securing the highest share of the vote of any candidate across the island to finishing 85th in a poll for 38 seats, bringing to an end 12 years as a people’s deputy. This setback was soon put fully into perspective when a very close relative was diagnosed with lung cancer. Tomorrow, on the 31st, our cat is having tests to investigate recent frequent bouts of sickness: after the year past, we can perhaps be forgiven a slight sense of trepidation. Across the Channel, the year ends with Brexit, which I’m afraid I see as one of the saddest and most destructive political events of my lifetime thus far. Across the Atlantic, the most negligent and absurd presidency in the history of the United States is thankfully reaching its conclusion, but in the meantime is predictably plumbing new depths of incompetence, deceit and vanity.

So, good riddance, 2020. You shall not be missed. Indeed, so loathsome have I found you that I may exact at least some revenge by turning you into a verb for use when something has gone badly wrong. As in: ‘You should have seen the mess – they totally 2020’d it’.

Enough of gloom. Enough of despair. Enough of 2020. As Archbishop Tutu once said: ‘Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.’ This New Year’s Eve, many of us will share the same hope – that 2021 will at least be better than 2020.

Globally, there is some light. President-elect Biden is imperfect but a colossus compared with his predecessor. He joins a small but influential group of national leaders from the rational, moderate, centre ground of politics, including President Macron, prime ministers Trudeau and Ardern and for now at least Chancellor Merkel. Scientific inquiry, since antiquity often the best antidote to populist rhetoric, has at remarkable speed developed vaccines which are likely to defeat or at least greatly suppress Covid-19. The vaccines may spur a period of substantial economic recovery as we gradually return to something resembling normality. A few weeks from now, the largest economy in the world will rejoin the critical Paris Agreement on climate change. We could be on the verge of great breakthroughs in treatments for HIV, hepatitis and multiple sclerosis, among other diseases. And as the journey to Brexit concludes, Europe may be free to return to the great economic, social and environmental challenges which most nation states are too small to solve alone without pooling some of their sovereignty, and perhaps the UK will realise that the more cosmetic it keeps its divorce from its neighbours the better its chance of containing economic damage.

In local politics, mindful of Archbishop Tutu’s advice, I have purposely gone looking for light. The States’ new leadership team have maintained their predecessors’ policies on Covid-19, which continue to protect our health, remain the least-worst approach for our economy and put us in the best position possible to roll out tens of thousands of vaccines – quickly, one hopes. They also maintained their predecessors’ approach to Brexit negotiations – actually, in this case, from Deputy Le Tocq down, many of the personnel remained unchanged anyway – and on both trade and fishing rights they secured about the best outcome possible for the Bailiwick. There is also encouraging news about Aurigny. A deal, long elusive, now seems imminent which should maintain Alderney’s air links to Guernsey and Southampton, reduce taxpayers’ losses and provide passengers with more rigorous service standards. This may be the first notable achievement genuinely owned by our new government and which may not have happened without it.

These three – the ongoing success of our approach to Covid-19, Brexit insofar as it relates to the Bailiwick and the Aurigny deal – have a few things in common. Clear political directions executed by professional staff – the politicians were not trying to run the services and the staff were not trying to make policy. Politicians and small teams of staff facing in the same direction – there were no maverick naysayers on the inside waiting to pick up the pieces of failure. Virtually no public input – at every stage decision-making was guided more by the island’s best long-term interests and less by what was popular this week or next. And minimal input from the States of Deliberation – small committees of the States made all the decisions within broad strategic parameters set down by the Assembly and other deputies did not constantly harangue their colleagues who they had appointed to make those decisions.

These three issues were, for different reasons, quite unusual. The circumstances which helped produce successful outcomes will be difficult to replicate on the big issues which face the new States. But, assuming Deputy Ferbrache’s demands of ‘action this day’ have not taken away from his colleagues all possible space for thinking and reflection, there are lessons to be learned from these successes which could help the new States in 2021 as they try to restore a sense of stability and growth all too absent from 2020.