Guernsey Press

A successful party system is reliant on interested outsiders

GUERNSEY’S initial flirtation with party politics has not gone well.

Published
Deputy Carl Meerveld, an official Option A campaigner, thanks referendum voters for backing island-wide voting.(Picture by Peter Frankland, 22963346)

In fact, it’s been quite inept in many ways.

Those groupings that sprang up with so much hope have all, so far at least, delivered very little.

And that is a problem, because if political organising fails to be a sustainable part of the electoral landscape, island-wide voting becomes a dangerous experiment and the drift that accompanies the first few years of each term of office will be intensified.

Perhaps the implosion last week of the Islanders Association’s executive committee was a symptom of its DNA, a party trying desperately not to be a traditional party, snubbing all the usual structures that would come with that.

Trying to shoehorn a consensus outlook into a ‘party’ model, to be all things to all people, because that’s the way local politics always has been and anything else would be an anathema to the electorate, has created weakness and contradictions.

Maybe the association will overcome the split of its executive committee, over management styles but also over expenses, and emerge stronger for it.

This is hard to see right now though.

Beyond attaching itself to the island-wide voting campaign and claiming it as a victory, the association has failed to create a sustainable base on which to build, or any policy positions on which its members will stand.

There is no constitution, either.

It has held a conference from which nothing has emerged, publicly at least.

What we have seen is a struggle to fill the executive committee posts – the founding members stepped up when others wouldn’t – and then those personalities clashing almost immediately.

It may be coincidental, but this all happened after one of those co-founders, and one of those who resigned from the committee, Peter Ferbrache, seconded Policy & Resources president Deputy Gavin St Pier’s bid for five-year terms.

Two more unlikely partners would be hard to find not so long ago, seen by many as sitting in opposing camps within the Assembly.

Some felt that the idea was a swift betrayal of the referendum result that the association had worked towards – Deputy Ferbrache was one of the nominated officials for option A.

You either see this chameleon nature of local politics, the ability to be on one side one minute and jumping the fence the next, as a joyous thing to be celebrated or a destabalising contradiction which ultimately stymies progress.

If political groupings do not successfully emerge before June 2020, we will have an election that is won on name recognition alone, 38 members that all believe they have a mandate from the whole island but no idea really what that is.

The five-year-term move was the wrong answer to the right question.

Government is grounded for the first year-and-a-half as its creates its vision, currently through the Policy & Resource Plan, and then that vision is insipid and uninspiring as it remains rooted in the middle of the road, so broad as to be meaningless, the everyman approach.

Extending the terms of office is unnecessary because it simply should not take that long to get a new States up and running in the first place.

Members entering the chamber on clear manifestos and support to implement those ideas would overcome that. It has the potential to enhance the scrutiny function of the Assembly too.

All the evidence so far is that will not happen and 38 individuals will be joined by the two Alderney representatives, assuming there is no clash over meeting dates, and the real difference island-wide voting will make is that public expectation is even higher.

The Islanders Association shows how difficult it is to get those outside the current narrow political sphere engaged and willing to take on roles and responsibilities that are necessary for these groupings to work.

It is not just about the politicians, but a support network for anything from fundraising, to media handling and public engagement, to policy research and creation.

Electoral reform creates a rare opportunity, should there be a drive and appetite to grab it.

Hopefully, people will be able to do just that, but there needs to be an acceptance that some party elements, including the discipline that they should instil, will be a necessity.

How this evolves in the next year or so – and how much of a distraction it becomes to the current crop of deputies and influences their behaviour, will make fascinating viewing.

There is less incentive for the incumbents to make a go of party politics because if they stand next time around they do so from an advantageous position.

It is those thinking of running who are not current or even former States members that will face a real struggle if standing as an independent among 90 others, they hold the key.

Whether some kind of party system successfully emerges rests heavily on the shoulders of the interested outsiders and whether there are enough of them willing to take up the challenge.