Is all this seat-swapping a sign of a healthy democracy?

After all, at that stage no one yet knows the strengths or weaknesses of all those political virgins so how can their colleagues really determine their suitability to serve on the various committees? Trying to do so tends to produce two distinct types of mistakes. Either good, fresh talent can be overlooked and left under-deployed or else plausible, but ultimately weak, members can be elected to key positions.

Of course committee places do need to be filled straight after an election but the problem under our current system is that if the States make any howlers in their choices then they are left to repent at leisure. Those selections are, in theory, locked in for four years.

That said, the current States is proving remarkable for the amount of resignations and seat swapping going on. It really is like a political version of musical chairs.

Take Education, Sport & Culture. In May 2016 we elected five deputies to discharge its vitally important mandate. Now three of those members have resigned one by one and the committee has also lost its chief secretary. Hardly the stability required to introduce some of the biggest changes to secondary and tertiary education in several generations.

First Deputy Marc Leadbeater stepped down. The word in the corridors was that this was a principled stance with him seeking a fresh mandate at a time when the committee’s competence was being questioned through a vote of no confidence. He had apparently expected the committee to propose his re-election but at the 11th hour they did a volt-face and proposed Deputy Inder instead.

Then we had the ‘school-gate’ scandal where Deputy Meerveld signed off a covert and misleading marketing campaign which sought to lobby deputies to support the committee’s ideas by pretending to be a grass roots campaign on social media. Not all of the members may have understood exactly what he had in mind but most of them still agreed that he should spend £10,000, which they definitely did not have, in doing it.

The Press quickly rumbled what was going on and exposed it. Cue the resignation of Deputy Meerveld, who took all the blame on his own shoulders and yet didn’t appear in the least contrite. His resignation opened the way for Deputy Gollop to join the committee.

Shortly afterwards we learned that Deputy David De Lisle was resigning because he didn’t really like the committee’s direction of travel. At the time of writing we don’t know who will take his place but the point is that in just 20 months 60% of the original committee has stepped down. And that despite them winning a confidence vote.

Then we have the situation at Economic Development. Less of a slow unravelling here than a sudden and rather mystifying development out of left field.

Its president, Deputy Ferbrache, was asked to step aside temporarily while an audit inquiry was carried out into how £300,000 came to be paid by the Public Trustee to the law firm where Advocate Ferbrache is a consultant. (Don’t expect me to shed any light on that episode as I’m as in the dark as anyone else. I guess that is why we need an independent inquiry). Anyway Deputy Ferbrache took the request as an attack on his integrity and stood down altogether as the committee president.

From there things snowballed slightly with the vice-president, Deputy Kuttelwascher, going for the top job but being pipped at the post by Deputy Parkinson. At that point he kept his promise to resign from the committee too. So 40% of the political members of that committee gone and, just like Education, it too lost its chief secretary.

I know we are only talking about two committees but these days we only have six ‘principal committees’ and it is hard to think of any with mandates more important than these two. Developing our island’s economy and educating its young [and not so young] are about as crucial as any roles within the States.

What does 2018 hold? Have the musical chairs stopped or will the magic roundabout grind on? Or even speed up? Is it a sign of a dysfunctional States? A riven States? Or just the normal ups and downs of a healthy democracy? Answers on a postcard, please.

More relevantly to this column, does all this seat swapping render the issue of possible mid-term committee elections irrelevant? I don’t think so.

I can certainly see the counter argument in favour of committee stability, but at the same time I am convinced it is outweighed by the positives such a system would deliver. It would allow round pegs to extricate themselves from square holes without the fuss which inevitably surrounds a resignation. It would allow the States to endorse high-performing committees while ringing the changes in those which were falling short without the need for the ‘blood on the floor’ which comes with votes of no confidence. And it would allow talent overlooked the first time around to be put to work, rather than leaving those members under-utilised for four whole years.

So am I about to press for mid-term elections? Well no, not yet, for a very simple reason. First, we have to decide how, and how often, we are going to elect members to the Assembly.

I believe a referendum is due on that next autumn. After that is done and dusted, then I definitely think it is worth considering.