A promising start

LAST week’s States meeting saw the first fairly meaty agenda for Guernsey’s new parliament to get their teeth into and started to give us a sense of the Assembly’s flavour.

How united is it going to be? What will its approach be to social issues? How is it going to tackle the huge fiscal challenges which lie ahead? Will it be adult and responsible or shallow and populist? Were parties just election vehicles or are they going to dominate the new States term? Are election promises going to be honoured?

Let’s unpack some of that.

So far there has been a fair amount of esprit de corps, pledges to work together and a reasonable sense of common purpose. How solid that will prove to be who knows, but personally I hope that it will hold. I certainly don’t want to go through another fractious and destructive States like the last one.

The odd thing is that the most frequent calls to ‘all pull together for the sake of the island’ seem to be coming from those most prone to firing Exocets at the old ‘establishment’ just a few months ago. Odd, that.

As for the poll-topper, and former president of P&R, Deputy St Pier, he seems to have taken to his new role of scrutineer-in-chief with gusto. He is looking at every single proposal to come before the States line-for-line and quizzing their proposers in detail. If anything, he could be criticised for being somewhat OTT in his new role but I am sure he will calm down in time and no one can suggest that he is trying to be anything but constructive.

As for social issues – I’ll be honest, I was seriously worried that this new States might be far less liberal than the last. That might still be the case but at least they passed their first, undemanding, test with flying colours.

The patently correct proposal from ESS (I know that I would say that) to spend just a few tens of thousands of pounds on reducing child poverty was overwhelmingly approved. That wasn’t a big surprise, but what was heartening was the tone of the debate. It’s true that there were a few appalling and undeserved slurs on a particular group of claimants and the odd depressing stereotype on display. However, these were heavily outweighed by the enlightened and insightful contributions of many members, both new and old.

I only wish the public were as well-informed. I know that ‘perception is reality’, and urban myths are hard to debunk, but it is depressing to spend weeks explaining the truth about a situation only for it to be apparent that in some quarters that hasn’t changed the narrative at all.

After the debate I was stopped by a woman in Market Square who told me that ‘youngsters are getting more than £800 to lie around doing nothing – it was on the Press and I am not happy about it’.

I tried to explain that people on Income Support have a work requirement, unless they are past retirement age, or have another valid reason for not working. I tried to explain that the vast majority of claimants are working hard in lower paid jobs with several dependants and large outgoings. That the benefit they typically receive was a fraction of the poorly named ‘benefit limitation’.

I suspect it was in vain. After all, a good, comfortable prejudice is very hard to shift.

I’m running out of space so I had better tackle some of the other questions I posed at the top of this article.

Are parties going to hold together? They are fracturing already.

Are election promises – both by parties and individuals – going to be kept? Not a chance. Many deputies are already edging ever so gently away from their pledges and a few seem to have forgotten them already. I really don’t know whether to be relieved about that – because if they kept all of their irresponsible and rash promises, Guernsey would be in the soup – or whether to be really annoyed that they dissembled for electoral gain. I think the answer is both.

Responsible or populist? The jury is out, but there have already been some shockingly populist moves. I agree 100% with Deputy De Lisle that the removal of special tax treatment for older islanders was wrong. I intend to try my best to correct that. But a £4m. gesture with no idea or suggestion of where the cash was to come from? I ask you!

As for the huge questions surrounding taxation and spending – who knows? It’s easy to be unified when deciding to kick the problem down the road. But what will give when the irresistible force of resistance to paying more tax meets the immovable object of demands for decent public services I still have no idea.

P&R is charged with coming up with the final proposals but I will be one of a small team advising them. I really relish that challenge, but then I am a veteran political masochist.

Whatever the final solution, it will be deeply unpopular and I only hope my 39 colleagues are braced for the vitriol coming their way. On that note – have a cool yule, dear reader.