Worried about something? Join the party

TODAY, we shall mostly be talking political parties. Not movements or groupings or even loose alliances but proper, red-blooded political parties. Like Labour or the Tories. Not the Lib Dems, obviously. They don’t count.

Mind, looking at the mess Mrs May’s lot are making of Brexit, it’s not clear whether the ancient and honourable Conservative and Unionist Party is one or two separate organisations sheltering under the same banner but with with viscerally opposing ideologies.

Anyway, the point is that what’s happening with the Islanders, the Ferbrache-Mooney-Meerveld axis that has no leader, and the initiative headed by Gavin St Pier and Heidi Soulsby that has no name, is fascinating.

You see, I’m not one of those who thinks that what’s happening is bad or dangerous. Realistically, the dog’s breakfast and already struggling island-wide voting referendum is far more of a potential threat to the island’s stability, but we can look at that another day.

Instead, I’m more taken with what lies behind these movements. John Gollop was blunt: ‘the ultimate goal is power. Maybe supplanting the existing [Policy & Resources] leadership, and radically reducing the policy power and influence of technocratic elites,’ he said on Twitter.

Well, perhaps. But if you look at what they’ve actually said, Deputy St Pier is searching for a new kind of politics, one which is ‘broad-based and has solid roots in civic society, not a skin-deep, personality-based, populist agenda’.

The Islanders are all about ‘developing a decisive, effective and efficient government rooted in and driven by our community’ and one that enables the electorate to have direct participation in political issues important to them.

Nothing too objectionable there, eh?

Equally – and no offence intended – these aren’t exactly rallying calls. Neither has the power of a ‘for the many, not the few’, for instance. Which is sort of where I’m coming from.

Political parties historically spring from the people to champion common causes or right manifest wrongs. In Labour’s case, it was to improve conditions for the ordinary working man, sorry, person. What we forget now is how bad things were then.

The armed forces, for example, were in despair because they couldn’t recruit men fit enough to fight because of malnutrition and their poor physical condition caused by appalling living conditions. Think about that for a moment and it’s a savage indictment of society at the time.

Labour’s legacy, the goal of working class representation in British Parliament, reached Guernsey in 1948 when the post-Occupation Reform Law was implemented, and the drive towards a fairer society has continued to trickle down here ever since.

Jersey has had political parties over the centuries, also geared to specific causes, such as when the Jeannot Party was formed to oppose the cabal of jurats supporting the then Lt-Bailiff. But all that waned with the introduction of the secret ballot in 1891.

So clearly, Guernsey is in different territory. And if the drivers behind the new movements aren’t fighting social oppression or manifest wrongs, what are they?

How about this: ‘This island is falling apart. I have never known so many unhappy islanders. This used to be a wonderful place to live. It’s not any more. I find it so sad that our island is being destroyed…’

That’s a Twitter post I came across at about the same time as Deputy Gollop was making his power-grab comments and it certainly chimed with me.

Ignore the words for a moment and concentrate on the sentiment. Something’s wrong, even if it is difficult to articulate. Modified, the comment reflects thousands of conversations across the island right now – from concerns over air and sea links to slow economic growth to fears about over-development and house prices (falling/too high).

Yet the island remains prosperous, government has controlled spending (if not yet truly transformed the way it operates) and the underlying economy is pretty sound.

But… there’s that palpable sense something’s not quite right. What’s not right depends on your circumstances. Those of my fictional Mrs Sebire from the Vale will differ from those of Mr Chief Exec or Mr Hotelier, or even Mr Retailer, and range from simply paying the bills to anxieties over strategic futures.

But dig down and somewhere along the line, all of them will have a problem with what government is – or isn’t – doing. That it’s not focused on real-world problems and handing out subsidised e-bikes won’t solve anything (although I support the initiative).

But wait a moment. The emerging political movements are also unhappy with the way government acts, works and thinks (‘thinks’ in the sense of evolving sensible policies that improve life here for the many).

So it’s tempting to conclude it’s unanimous that ‘the States’ isn’t working. But that’s daft. Skilled, dedicated people are keeping the wheels turning, dealing with Brexit, implementing the two-school educational model and transforming health care.

So the deep-seated unease many have is less tangible, and I think it’s this. In the absence of a unifying crisis – think Occupation or Jersey’s unemployment crisis post-2008 crash – the subliminal fear is that Guernsey has lost its way.

An unintended consequence of the increasingly hard-fought consensus government, combined with ease of social media and other lobbying, means that when policies do finally emerge, watered-down and unrecognisable, everyone’s dissatisfied. Even the originating States department – just look at the transport strategy.

Yet the big ticket items identified for us by Oxford Economics back in 2012, including communication and transport links with the outside world, government revenues, demographics, poor promotion of the island and rising welfare costs, remain largely unresolved.

Dealing with this shouldn’t be that difficult. But, as the two emerging movements explicitly acknowledge, the States Assembly itself is proving to be the biggest obstacle as members strive for compromise (AKA watering down) rather than conceding and allowing a challenging policy to remain intact and therefore have a chance of working.

So if political parties can get us through that in these difficult times, bring them on.

PS: I haven’t forgotten John Semenowicz’s Guernsey Whig Party but remain to be convinced it’s not actually a wag’s party wind-up…