Deputies lucky to be able to vote with their consciences

Has anyone who wants to introduce political parties worked inside such a system?

My first job after university was working for a House of Commons MP. He was an honourable man, a former cabinet minister. He taught me a lot. For example, I had not known about ‘pairing’, where UK parties match off their MPs so that most votes need not be attended. Only where the party enforcers, the ‘whips’, marked an upcoming debate with three horizontal lines on the hymn sheet was the voting done as I had expected.

The ‘three-line whip’ votes tended to be the most controversial. My boss’s party had a big majority and policy-making was more extreme than he liked. The sight of him torn between loyalty to the party which had given him his job, and voting according to his conscience, was sad to behold.

Guernsey should count itself lucky that our States deputies can vote with their conscience.

Party loyalty works on lists and patronage – from candidate lists at the start to New Year’s honours or Queen’s Birthday honours at the end.

Again, Guernsey should be grateful that our highest rank, our jurats, are chosen openly by the States of Deliberation as a whole, and not by party bosses with lists of favourites. ‘Contact me...’, said Deputy St Pier, to close his speech to Chamber with weasel words about ‘coalitions between individuals’ (Guernsey Press, 16 January), licking his metaphorical pencil.

Guernsey has long enjoyed a flat society without politicians ennobled for party loyalty. It is part of our appeal.

Deputy St Pier mocks our system of government for ‘not [being] copied by other jurisdictions’.

May I suggest why that is so? Guernsey men and women have known no autocratic government since we were declared Roman citizens in 212AD.

OK, I skip over some quo warranto extortions by Count Otton de Grandson 700 years ago, and the five years of German Occupation. But I defy anyone to find a jurisdiction outside the Channel Islands with such a long tradition of forging justice at the hands of its own populace. Our individuality and stubbornness is not a joke. It is a global treasure.

Sentiments of pity should be reserved for other countries, places where the rule of citizens is immature, or the population unwieldy; where democracy may never work without parties, lists and three-line whips.

FERGUS DUNLOP,

Mont Saint Lodge,

St Saviour’s.