What real danger was the chief minister trying to alert us to?

Being unfamiliar with some of this terminology I looked it up on Google. For ‘practical politics’ I found this definition offered in 1918 by the American cultural critic Henry L Mencken: ‘The whole aim of Practical Politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary’.

As for the four evils which Deputy Ferbrache alerted us to, ‘McWokeyism’ has only one repeated reference in Google, being a new word invented last November in America and used just once on an American chat show. Thankfully it is not in common usage.

‘Moral righteousness’ is a term rarely applied in a political context, but most recently a few days before Deputy Ferbrache’s speech. It appeared in a tweet from Mike Pompeo – a loyal aide of Donald Trump’s to the bitter end – and it also referred to ‘wokeness’ in a similar list of social evils.

I am more familiar with the term ‘navel gazing’ as a jazzy synonym for over-deliberation – a systemic shortcoming suffered by the States of which Deputy Ferbrache will have had first-hand experience over the past four years. But the expression ‘vanity projects’ is more elusive, despite its popularity. Which projects was he referring to, and why does he consider them the product of pure vanity?

Maybe Deputy Ferbrache didn’t expand on this, but your report did not quote him providing examples of specific instances where any of these social evils had been an impediment to local political progress. What real danger was he trying to alert us to? I am sure that many of your readers (including me) who did not hear his entire speech would be reassured to know that he is not, to paraphrase Mencken, ‘menacing the Guernsey populace with imaginary hobgoblins in order to establish himself as our saviour’.

He was right, though, to say that his background should not be a matter for his speech, but he nevertheless seemed to refer to it at length.

I have attended two other speeches delivered by Deputy Ferbrache since his appointment as chief minister and much of his chummy jibber-jabber was on the subject of his under-privileged background in the 1960s. He needs to assure us that he can apply a broader and more contemporary perspective on today’s social issues, than one based on adolescent experiences of sixty years ago. Those who suffered poverty in their youth do not hold a monopoly over social awareness.

Our chief minister needs not fear being considered an ‘Antichrist’ – a ridiculous accusation of which I was unaware. But I hope he is committed to engaging with all of those whose interests he represents, including a younger and more diverse audience; and he needs to show us that he is listening to a range of constructive and progressive ideas without dismissing them as mere ‘woke’.

I am not yet convinced that he is.

NIGEL P DE LA RUE

Crosstrees,

Ville Baudu,

Vale, Guernsey.