Guernsey Press

Let’s stick with what we’ve got

JERSEY’S Council of Ministers has decided to rebrand itself as the ‘Government of Jersey’. The idea is to make clear to everyone that it is the ministers who make all of the big decisions and the rest of Jersey’s parliament are there simply to hold them to account. They may have a point, but if the erstwhile council really is Jersey’s government then it’s very much a minority government – and as we all know, minority governments tend to be fragile affairs.

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In fact I think the weakness of minority administrations is the main flaw lying at the heart of any attempt to create a classic ‘executive government’, with all the power lying with a cabinet, in any of the Channel Islands.

Why? Because so far none of our insular communities have really embraced party politics and therefore there can be no party or coalition of parties which commands a majority in their parliaments.

In time that might change, but right now the ‘Government of Jersey’ is totally reliant on the support of backbenchers, none of whom they can whip to support the collective will of ministers. No parties [or just one small one in Jersey] means no party line to be handed down from above. So all of those States members who are not part of the highfalutin new ‘Government of Jersey’ will remain free to vote as they see fit. Maybe that can be made to work through persuasion, cajoling or force of personality from the top, but the opportunities for repeated ‘government defeats’ will be legion.

How will the rest of the States and the public receive this assertion of executive power by those sitting around the top table?

I am not close enough to Jersey to answer that question. It will depend on the knee-jerk reaction of the rest of their States members. I don’t know them at all but I would predict two possible responses. The more strident and forceful backbenchers will respond something along the lines ‘so I am in parliament but not in government, am I? We will see about that’.

The weaker or more passive members might welcome the loss of apparent responsibility and relish being able to say to their angry constituents ‘it’s not me – it’s the Government of Jersey’.

As for the general public, I suspect it will take them a generation to come to terms with the fact that they have elected their States members but most of them are apparently not there to govern at all. Rather, most of their representatives are just holding to account those who really are governing. That may be the international norm, but for most Channel Islanders the ingrained mind-set is that the States is the government and any suggestion that most members are outside it seems perverse.

Of course in Guernsey things are very different. We have never had a council of ministers. Indeed we have never had any ministers, even though for a while we perversely gave committee presidents that misleading title. So there is simply no body of States members – other than the whole Assembly – which could rightly be called ‘The Government of Guernsey’.

Some would like to see that change. I would not. While there are arguments on both sides, one thing is clear to me. It would be perverse to leave the government of Guernsey to a cabinet of senior politicians unless and until party politics becomes so ingrained that an administration can be formed which commands a majority in the States Assembly. As I say, minority governments are fraught with difficulties. Just look at the USA where the president and the Democrat majority in Congress are at odds.

So I suppose the final question is whether full-blown party politics would be a good idea for Guernsey. I won’t repeat the arguments I’ve used previously both in favour and against. Simply to say on the weight of arguments my conclusion has always been a definitive no. However, recent events both here and in the UK have significantly strengthened my views in this respect.

Firstly, I have found all of the attempts to form political groupings in Guernsey less than impressive. Secondly, on the other side of the Channel, the whole Brexit saga has shown UK party politics at its worst.

Most MPs are intellectually against Brexit but willing to approve it in order to respect the outcome of the 2016 referendum. There is therefore a clear parliamentary majority for a form of Brexit but it would be a Brexit which fell on the ‘soft side’ of Mrs May’s red lines. So should she shift those lines in order to achieve a majority and avoid the risk of a no-deal Brexit? Well of course that would be in the interests of the country, but it would be likely to split the Tory party in two by enraging the hard-line Brexiteers.

That is a fundamental problem with party politics. A politician’s loyalty to their party can so easily eclipse their wider responsibilities.

For the sake of balance, I should add that Mr Corbyn’s Labour party has come out of the whole desperately sad and divisive Brexit saga no better.

In fact so badly has executive government handled Brexit that a group of MPs at Westminster suggested parliament itself should take control of the process. That was greeted with incredulity by some, saying it would breach a long-observed convention. Yet in Guernsey our parliament has always been in control and by and large it has worked fairly well.

I am no small-minded Guernseyman who objects to looking to the UK for examples of best practice. But at the same time I firmly believe that there are times when the traditional Guernsey way can be better than the English way and we should just keep on keeping on. Resisting party politics and cabinet government is one such case.

Anything which puts tribalism above the interests of all of the public has to be bad news. Party politics might be an easier way of organising democracy, but it’s so inferior in so many other ways that the longer Guernsey can avoid it, the better.