Pendulum politics swings into action
‘CALL me old-fashioned but my committee intends to implement the States resolution as approved.’
With that, Deputy Lindsay de Sausmarez highlighted what has been a notable shift in the new Assembly.
The subject happened to be maintenance of the L’Ancresse anti-tank wall and Deputy de Sausmarez was answering questions in her role as president of Environment & Infrastructure.
Good-naturedly, she spent 20 minutes assuring her questioner, Deputy Chris Le Tissier, that, if given enough money by Policy & Resources, her committee had every intention of keeping the wall upright and intact in the manner envisaged by a requete agreed in April last year.
Deputy de Sausmarez had voted against that requete but, unusually in the current Assembly, seems prepared to accept the democratic decision (a narrow one, supported only after a voting recount).
It is in sharp contrast to Education, Sport & Culture, which wants to clear away a host of resolutions (including one championed by its own president) on the premise that it needs to ‘own the process’ and not be bound by the votes of previous Assemblies.
Likewise, Policy & Resources is cannily using a housekeeping exercise intended to tidy up redundant resolutions to sweep away three where the previous States agreed to transfer probate away from the Established Church and place it in more secular control, where it belongs.
The president of P&R, it should be said, voted against the original proposal.
The idea that committees will follow their own path is not new. Generally, they just ignore unwanted resolutions.
However, the current vogue for expunging elements of the previous Assembly – much in the way President Biden is undoing the work of his predecessor – regardless of the amount of work done seems more akin to a switch in ruling political party than a change in Assembly.
The danger is that, if the trend grows, old-fashioned views such as those of Deputy de Sausmarez will be replaced by tribalism and the party pendulum of huge swings in direction.
Continuity of government is not one of the States’ strong points at the best of times. This threatens to make it worse.