Were factions just fiction?

HERE’S a question.

What exactly are ‘factional politics’?

The president of Policy & Resources thought they were going on during last week’s big debate on ‘living responsibly with Covid’ and he clearly didn’t like them one little bit.

I’m with Deputy Ferbrache in deprecating genuine factional politics. But with the greatest respect to our top politician, I think he was seeing snakes where none existed in that particular debate.

I simply can’t agree that either the process of drafting amendments to P&R’s rather anodyne policy letter, or the debate on them, really displayed factional politics at all.

In fact they were far more like a long-overdue attempt at collaborative politics by this assembly.

So back to my opening question.

To me, true ‘factional politics’ is where politicians form into distinct tribes and then work and vote with their own tribe to the exclusion of others.

What’s worse is that their decision-making soon comes to respond more to tribal loyalty and to peer pressure than it does to their own judgement or the prompting of their conscience.

I abhor such an approach to politics and that is one of the reasons I am so concerned about party politics taking root in Guernsey.

Firstly, I think that suborning your own judgement in order to toe a party line is ethically akin to lying – which is never a good thing.

Secondly, I think factions that demand loyalty simply lead to much worse government.

That doesn’t mean that politicians shouldn’t work together. Of course they should and they always have.

The difference we have traditionally seen in Guernsey politics is that the factions or alliances have been temporary, shifting from issue to issue, and respecting each individual member’s judgement.

So, for example, if one week the States are discussing housing, you might work with one group of deputies who you tend to agree with on that matter.

You might draft an amendment which you put forward with Deputy X because you both believe a change of policy is needed.

But the next week, when the States are discussing Education, you and Deputy X are on totally different sides of the fence and you are in bed with Deputy Y instead.

I really don’t see the problem with that approach to politics.

It would be truly chaotic if each individual deputy were to try to plough their own furrow without cooperating with others of a like mind.

The important thing is that you do so without compromising your own individual judgement, which is something you owe to the electorate. Of course there will be some deputies who you tend to agree with far more often than others, simply because your political ethos is closer to theirs, but loyalty should never, ever trump judgement.

Actually though, I don’t think even this sort of ‘shifting factionalism’ was on display during the big Covid debate. Rather, I think it was something I wish we could see far more of. I was very much at the periphery of the process but what I saw going on was many deputies, of very different stripes, coming together to try to improve a set of propositions with no wrecking intentions at all.

Quite the opposite to factional politics.

So was it a faction-free zone? I would like to think so, but I was rather confused by some of the apparent group voting against the amended propositions at the end.

Oddly that groupthink didn’t come from P&R, who had brought the policy letter. Indeed at least three of their members voted for one or more of the amended propositions – including their president.

Rather it appeared to be the Guernsey Party and some fellow travellers who appeared determined to simply vote everything down and leave us with nothing decided whatsoever.

I’m really not sure why.

So, for example, a member who had stressed the need for a review into the way Guernsey had handled the pandemic, during debate on that amendment, ended up voting against the proposition he had helped to insert. Very odd.

Talking of odd – what to make of Deputy John Dyke’s cameo appearance from the Cayman Islands late on in proceedings?

Now he insisted he had followed the debate throughout.

In which case, hats off to him for getting up at 4am local time.

He also stressed that it was from listening to the debate (but without ever asking to be registered to take part in it) that he gained the impression the propositions were sub-optimal and so he needed to dial in to vote them down.

I am far too much of a parliamentarian to ever question the veracity of anything a colleague says, so I will limit myself to commenting on Deputy Dyke’s very peculiar tactics.

There he was, listening intently under his palm tree and hearing proposition after proposition that he disagreed with being added by amendment. But it never occurred to him during his long hours of careful attention to ask the Bailiff if he could actually join the meeting in order to vote against those amendments he so disagreed with.

Rather, he remained a passive bystander until the 11th hour, when he finally asked to join in so he could vote against proposals he seemingly couldn’t be bothered to oppose earlier on. I’ve been in politics a long time but it’s certainly a new one on me. Each to their own I suppose, but personally I thought it was a rum do.

Of course I was partly to blame. Against my real instincts, I had voted to allow one more hybrid meeting out of respect to vulnerable members who might genuinely be worried about attending a crowded chamber when Covid is still quite prevalent. It never occurred to me I might be inviting blocking votes from those on the other side of the Atlantic.

So were there any factional politics going on last week?

You decide.

My answer is probably yes, but maybe not the faction Deputy Ferbrache was worried about.