PwC report is not the end of the runway

These are critical times. The links are crucial to the island’s economic and social wellbeing. Threats to lifeline sea links leave us ‘vulnerable, exposed and at risk’.

While Deputy Lyndon Trott was keen to point out that ‘what we have is good’ he also said that under the old Economic Development committee there had been an absence of a clear vision and progress had been painfully slow.

Whether the long-awaited PwC report crystallises that vision remains to be seen.

Official reports carry less weight these days as deputies are just as likely to side with local knowledge as with expensive analysis by outside consultants.

Sadly, it will be weeks until those outside the corridors of power can judge whether P&R is right to disregard PwC’s runway recommendation. Although it has been in the hands of the committee since the autumn it will be published only in time for a States meeting in the first quarter of next year.

Reports that are held back tend to be watered down.

Every paragraph is pored over and often the meat of the argument is reduced to gristle.

So to see the PwC report as the holy grail that will transform air and sea links was always optimistic.

It will have value if it prepares the island for the possible departure of Condor, for, as the Tory party is learning, it is always better to have a Plan B in hand should the worst happen.

The island’s vulnerability over sea links is too crucial to be ignored.

However, there must be doubts that the States will as easily get passed the logjam of the runway extension.

For the runway is Guernsey’s Brexit. There are zealots who believe in it with passion and those who oppose it with equal ferocity. Those in the middle, who just want the best decision for Guernsey, are battered by both sides.

Come February, some deputies will be forced to choose where they stand. Most know their place.