Building a toxic legacy?

WITH less than two years before the last States meeting of this term, the public are starting to get very judgemental about the current Assembly. You really can’t blame them, for two reasons.

Firstly it is the destiny of every States to disappoint. Straight after the general election there is always a very upbeat feeling of optimism. The new Assembly will surely be a very different one to those of the past. Look at all of those bright-eyed and bushy-tailed newbies, free from political baggage, and gagging to make their mark. Just watch them go.

But then disappointingly they start to struggle to deliver. Weighed down by the burden of reality, and wading through the treacle of ‘events’, they soon realise that things are not quite as straight-forward as they liked to portray them while on the election trail. And it is so hard to implement a cohesive set of policies as well as fire-fighting all of the time.

These issues are common to all assemblies but, ask some, isn’t this one disappointing more than most? I think that is probably a fair allegation, but if so, then why?

To me it is the confused soup of political philosophies which the last election threw up. Maybe as a result of island-wide voting? What do I mean? Well, I suppose I am asking: what is this Assembly, and what does it stand for? I am really not sure. And if a States doesn’t even know where it wants to go, then how on earth do they set about getting there?

It certainly isn’t a socially progressive States. Any moves in that direction have felt like the extraction of particularly stubborn molars. There have been some successes in this regard but blimey has it been very hard going.

But at the same time neither is it a fiscally conservative States, focused on restricting public spending. Some of our leaders and their myrmidons talk a good game in this respect, but take a close look under the rhetoric, and you will find that public expenditure has been rising quite rapidly. I believe at a greater rate than during any other recent assembly, but I stand to be corrected.

Actually, that largesse would not be such a bad thing if it had focused on infrastructural investment and renewal, to reverse the decades of under-investment and decline we have seen. Sadly it has not. Rather, it is nearly all increases in revenue spending, with very little significant capital investment. Of course, there was a genuine intention to correct this at the start of the term but sadly the wheels are coming off our capital programme. ‘Events, dear boy, events.’

There is certainly a valid defence of rising revenue spending, in the form of Guernsey’s changing demographics. This was always bound to drive up health care costs, social care costs, and expenditure on pensions.

Mind you, it should also have led to a significant fall in education spending, via primary school rationalisation and so on, but there is scant evidence of that. If anything quite the reverse.

Also if an assembly is going to spend more – which this one is – then it really needs to generate the revenues to fund that spending. You don’t need me to tell you how spectacularly this States has failed to do that so far.

But what really worries me is not the failure to reform Guernsey’s tax system thus far, but rather the impression that many of our leaders have almost given up on the process. Preferring instead to constantly trot out the mantra that States members have made their bed and now they can jolly well lie in it.

In some ways it is an understandable human reaction from P&R to the defeat of their tax proposals but I have a feeling that the next two years is going to feel like a very long term to have government by hissy fit.

So spending rising, income not keeping pace, and progressive politics deemed to be the work of Beelzebub. Can it get much worse? Sadly, I think it can. I have a horrible feeling that this Assembly might be going to leave Guernsey with a toxic legacy which will blight its successors.

Nothing is official yet but if the rumours are true it will be asked to change our system of government to a ‘quasi cabinet’ system. P&R will be expanded. Not only that but it will be populated by the presidents of the other major committees. So very much an incipient cabinet system, with all of the issues that creates, of nearly all of the power being in a very small number of hands.

So what will the rest of the deputies do? I suppose they will largely be scrutineers. That is a noble function but scrutinising alone is no substitute for our current system where every member is part of the executive.

Anyway, those with decent memories will remember a similar (but less extreme) system which was tried out not that many years ago. It was called the Policy Council and worked about as well as a bath without a plug. Remind me again, how did Einstein define insanity?

So this Assembly has not been a vintage one. Partly due to chemistry, and partly due to events. Hopefully its final legacy will not be to lock in top-down, political control freakery for decades to come. That really would dwarf all of its other failings.