‘No.10: We are very, very progressive – just so long as that doesn’t mean anything at all has to change...’
Peter Roffey admits he’s never been a party animal, but the newly announced alliance of ‘like-minded’ deputies has inspired him to come up with a set of principles for his soon-to-be-launched Charter 2019...
PLEASE don’t tell anybody, but I am busy working on a game-changing new political document which will transform the way government works in Guernsey. No more inefficiency. No more squandered money. Gone will be the perception that the States just do their own thing and ignore public opinion. From now on we will be universally known as ‘the best States ever’.
But it goes further than that. In future if I don’t get my way over a major policy I will be able to throw my toys out of the pram and warn those who won that democratic vote that they had better watch out because my party – sorry, not party at all, but ‘charter’ – is bigger than theirs.
So when my seminal document is finally launched on the seas of public opinion (some time next year), what will it say? Will it set out the detailed fiscal or taxation policy which my fellow travellers and I wish to see the States adopt? Don’t be silly, that would be far too hard and open to criticism. After all, we all know where the devil lurks. Nor will it detail our suggested social policy, economic/population policies or our proposed strategies for health or education.
Why not? Because that would be giving a hostage to fortune and allow others to point out all of the flaws in what we want for Guernsey. Instead my wizard wheeze is to set out a broad charter explaining the broad political principles which my mates and I espouse.
So here it is – ‘Charter 2019’.
These things we regard as self-evident...
1. Let’s have a bit more common sense, eh.
2. No more spending like bloney drunken sailors.
3. Lower taxes but better services.
4. We support the old, and the young – not forgetting all those in-between.
5. Bloney ’eck, let’s stop getting in all these experts from ‘for’n parts’ like England. After all, Bert from Bordeaux knows his stuff.
6. We will obviously implement any policy which attracts more than 1,000 signatures on an e-petition or 100 on a protest march (particularly if it was a chilly day) because that obviously represents majority of island opinion.
7. The economy is a good thing to support.
8. All this green nonsense – sorry, green stuff – is all well and good as window dressing, but we mustn’t let the environment get in the way of doing what the heck we want. It shouldn’t cost us a penny either.
9. Incoming workers will be very welcome to support business and public services but they must assimilate. Within a year they must learn to drive around the island every Sunday (including going up the bloney Valdees), turn bonchos, use ‘eh’ at the end of every sentence and moan about absolutely everything. Anybody failing to learn our ways will be given a one-way Condor ticket – of course that might not mean they leave any time soon.
10. We are very, very progressive. Just so long as that doesn’t mean that anything at all has to change. I always said letting people buy alcohol or petrol on a Sunday would lead to a ‘Mad Max-style dystopia’.
11. Err – no, I think that is it.
So you can see that once I get a gang (not party) of similarly-minded deputies to join me in signing this charter, then Guernsey politics will never be the same again. My grouping (not party or anything like it) won’t stand under a common manifesto at the next election. To do that we would need a detailed manifesto and people might not like our policies and vote against us. Nor will we always vote together. That would look like a party and, let me assure you, that is the last thing we will be.
What we will do is give you blood, sweat and tears in pursuit of a set of platitudes that are so general that they mean nothing at all. No reasonable elector could ask for more. Although of course if we take on any real committee work, producing real policies, then we won’t really have the time.
Seriously. The above might be a satire, but this really is a serious issue. Personally I love our individual/consensus style of politics with shifting alliances from subject to subject. I am not a party animal at all and can never see myself joining one. But I can see that there are pros as well as cons to party politics.
The upside is that at election time, instead of just picking individuals, voters can chose the party manifesto most likely to deliver the sort of policies they support. They will be voting for political programmes, not just candidates. The downside is the point scoring and opposition for opposition’s sake which comes with parties.
So to me, having political groupings without the courage to stand for election collectively may well prove to be the worst of all worlds.
Either that or just a complete damp squib. Probably the latter.
Next year’s killer quiz question may well be, ‘what was Charter 2018’?
