‘What you say to get elected must matter’

LISTENING to Deputy Murray’s podcast interview with the Guernsey Press, I was struck by how reasonably the good deputy was describing the forthcoming tax proposals. That said, the irony of his comments, like an attempted cycle up the Val des Terres, took my breath away.

His explanation of his support for GST was that he had volte faced on election promises of no new taxes because he ‘didn’t know’ about the full extent of the fiscal challenge faced by the island. Seemingly ‘when you’re outside the States you can’t really understand’ the full extent of the island’s finances but that ‘if you don’t learn from what you see when you come into the situation, you’re a fool’.

Now, I agree with him about learning from his mistakes but having unsuccessfully run against deputies pedalling those ‘mythical’ election promises, you’ll forgive me for not being entirely elated by his explanation.

At the time of the 2020 election, I was deeply frustrated by what I saw as ill-informed promises made by a large swathe of our now elected Assembly. I recall writing many draft posts responding to the fiscal myths and fallacies floating around on social media. But, after seeing the mood of the electorate eating up those chimeric election candy, I deleted them as so much wasted effort.

Putting aside that anyone who did a small bit of reading could have known about the structural deficit, the effects of Covid, Brexit, and that cutting the ‘bloated civil service’ was (sadly) a myth, along with various other claims that have now turned out to be questionable at best, I do take his word that his manifesto was put together in good faith.

I am sure that the claims made by many of the prospective deputies at the 2020 election were only unintentionally misleading, not maliciously misleading. That said, and by his own admission Deputy Murray probably wouldn’t have been elected if he had said he was going to introduce GST in his manifesto, this leaves us with the interesting question – had he known what he knows now, what would he have put in his manifesto? Does it matter? We will come back to that.

What should be applauded from Deputy Murray, and P&R, is that having looked at the whole picture and taken time to answer the difficult structural deficit problem, including infrastructure investment (albeit after several attempts and much prompting from both inside and outside the Assembly) it is good to see a real bit of policy that tries to tie this all together.

What is a little harder to accept is the audacious way that he justified his change in position in the Press podcast with a bit of mental judo that Donald Trump would be proud of.

Deputy Murray, you see, explained to listeners that GST may not be ‘what the people want’ but it’s the ‘right thing to do’. In this, he made good sense. Guernsey politicians are not elected to run the island by reading GPHYS and picking an opinion. They are elected to do what they think is best for the island. However, Deputy Murray then, in the next breath, mendaciously argued that the previous Assembly’s education transformation plan was flawed, not because of fiscal, policy or educational reasoning but because ‘people didn’t want large schools’.

As someone who contributed to that very difficult bit of policy reform, crafted to holistically deal with post-16 education, provide solutions such as reducing the revenue cost of ESC while improving the provision, I was astonished that Deputy Murray couldn’t see the irony in his words. Especially since he is the former vice president of ESC and was the chief architect of the fiscally dubious transformation plans which have led to increased class sizes, decrease in provision and has introduced new inefficiencies in an already inefficient model.

Saying that the savings won’t come from the myth of ‘cutting the bloated civil service’ but from productivity improvements while ignoring the myths spun at the last election about the proposed educational reform was galling.

The cherry on the cake was Deputy Murray bemoaning the fact that desperately needed infrastructure investments could have been much cheaper if it had been made earlier. All while ignoring the fact that were it not for the education reform plans being derailed in 2020 with the cynical election campaign called ‘Pause and Review’, Guernsey would have completed the project and at much lower cost than the economically illiterate plans from the current ESC.

This juxtaposition of reasoned, informed, evidence-based decision making, against the deeply flawed and needlessly expensive reforms to Education which defines this States Assembly and its deputies, is baffling. It certainly does not help the case they are trying to make.

Back to the question I posed earlier: Does it matter? I believe very strongly that what you say to get elected must matter. Equally, if you make claims at an election that you later find to be myths, you cannot go back to the electorate and say ‘Continue believing in some of the myths but not those important other myths’. One cannot ride on the tails of myths to be elected then turn around and expect the public to suddenly believe you when you try dispelling them.

Take it from me, and other members of the ‘Gang of Fail’, it makes no difference getting your reasoned, evidence-based proposal through the States if at the next election candidates do exactly what you did at the last election and exploit those myths to get elected.

Whether its new candidates who ‘just didn’t know’ or returning candidates who understand the power of opposing is much easier than trying to explain difficult solutions, myths will get them elected without a clear path to solve the complex problems they will face.

Guernsey needs to break the cycle of deputies only ‘discovering’ the problems once elected, then spending half the term trying to find solutions, then the next half fighting over the solutions without enough time to implement them before the next election, leaving an enticing ‘myth’ open and ready for the next batch of candidates to use in their manifestos.

But my sense is that we’re not going to see the cycle broken until deputies acknowledge the myths lurking in their own committee’s closets and that, dear reader, isn’t going to happen any time soon.