‘Guernsey way’ has failed

For many years, Guernsey’s governmental system and its closely related electoral system (in their various iterations) have been at best dysfunctional, if not completely broken. The shortcomings of the current Assembly perfectly illustrate this, both in terms of the flawed system by which our government is elected, and in terms of how those elected representatives organise themselves into a decision-making body.

The purpose of an electoral system is ‘to transform the express will of the voters into people who will represent it’. By this measure, Guernsey’s system fails. The principal idea behind island-wide voting was to increase from 16% to 100% the proportion of States’ members that voters could vote for. It may well have achieved this, but at a huge cost to democratic representation.

The results of the 2016 General Election (with seven voting districts) reveal that 35% of the total votes cast were for candidates who were not elected — that is, were ‘wasted votes’. In 2020 that figure rose to 47%. However, when taking into account unused votes (because the average number of votes cast was 26 out of a possible 38), the proportion of ‘wasted votes’ in 2020 increased to 63.6%. To put it another way, only 36.4% of votes that those who turned out were entitled to cast, led to the appointment of a deputy.

This is a lamentably inadequate representation of the will of islanders, even if they had any idea of what they were voting for. In 2020 they were expected to assess the ‘quality’ (whatever that is supposed to mean) of a large number of candidates about whom they knew very little; there was therefore no sense in which they could collectively have elected anything like the government they might have wished for.

As Deputy Roffey put it in another of his columns (Guernsey Press, 4 May 2023), he did not ‘know what this Assembly stands for’. At election time, no Guernsey voter can have the remotest idea what the elected Assembly will stand for, or even have any hope of influencing it.

Deputy Roffey is right on one point – the elected members of the States Assembly collectively form our government. This means that in 2020, and in one giant leap, just 36.4% of the votes entitled to be cast formed Guernsey’s government, with approximately half of those elected never having any prior experience of working within the States. That newly- formed government then elected the chief minister, committee presidents and members without any voter involvement whatsoever.

It is ironic, then, that a majority of the 38 deputies who form our government should recently have blamed Deputy Ferbrache for this having become a ‘zombie government’ on grounds that he has failed to provide leadership. But it is due to the paranoia expressed by Deputy Roffey over conferring any power on an ‘executive’ body in the States, that leadership is expected to be provided without any authority. That very rarely works in any walk of life, and never in politics.

This illustrates what is truly wrong with our system of government, and Deputy Roffey actually alludes to it throughout his article. He writes that our deputies ‘have their policies. They feel they have a mandate’. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that some are ‘determined to get their own way’. Neither is it surprising that 38 independent politicians, standing for election under 38 ill-defined policy agendas, and effectively forming a 38-way coalition government in which they all have an equal say, simply does not work.

This explains why, over the past four assemblies (at least) Guernsey’s government has failed – at enormous human and financial cost to islanders – to agree on key policies concerning transport, education, investment in infrastructure, taxation, etc. It explains why ‘consensus government’ does not work. What Deputy Roffey describes as a process of ‘scrutinising policy’ – the endless amendments, sursis and requetes that stifle the formulation of policy – does not work.

These are systemic faults, not the fault of certain individuals. And systemic problems can only be solved by changing the system.

Proposing an alternative approach is beyond the intended scope of this letter. Suffice to say that there is a wealth of data available on alternative systems of election and government that can and should be looked at.

Deputy Roffey has served the island with diligence and commitment over many years, and I respect him for that. But no doubt in common with the majority of his colleagues in the States, he is reluctant to change a system by which he was elected, and within which he has been able to exert his political influence. His article effectively claims that there is nothing to be fixed. This is why it will require an independent body to think outside of the box we find ourselves trapped in.

But what concerns me most about this column is the title – ‘Why we need to keep the Guernsey way’. I am proud to call myself a Guernseyman, knowing that my family established itself on the island nearly a thousand years ago. But if the stubborn and unthinking adherence to a failed system that risks Guernsey being considered as ungovernable is to be described as ‘the Guernsey way’, then pride in my island roots would turn to shame.

Nigel P de la Rue

Crosstrees, Ville Baudu, Vale