P&R: Don't believe the hype

Was the 2020 island-wide general election in fact a popularity contest and should its ‘winners’ have been recognised in the committee elections? If political experience is so important, why did Deputy St Pier stroll into the Treasury job when he was elected to the States for the first time in 2012?

Are lawyers temperamentally unsuited to politics? Did the ousted P&R genuinely lack a vision? Or perhaps most surprisingly, can you credit the fact that Deputies St Pier and Ferbrache were recently sitting at the same table comparing notes? Plaudits to them for that at least.

Let’s focus on vision. Deputy Ferbrache said openly that he disliked visions. He wanted action. He turned that instinct into a phrase ‘Action this Day’. He and his leadership team were fresh from an exciting election, having shed what they saw as some ‘dead wood’, and wanted to see things done.

The perception was the last States had been over-focused on strategies and policies, most of which have still not been realised.

But the new committee ran out of steam before the year was out. Apparently easy wins, focused on building repairs, proved more complicated than expected. Missteps sank progress on work which should have been fairly straightforward. ‘Action this Day’ became an albatross for P&R.

Did P&R talk the island down and evaporate ‘confidence’ built up over Covid? Unwittingly, but probably, yes. Did they need to go, to wipe the States’ slate clean for the rest of this term? As we’ve said before, ultimately they did.

We look forward to something better emerging next time around. But maybe we need to temper our expectations of what our government can, and will, deliver for us. Don’t believe the hype.