Yes, we are in Truss territory

POLITICS is clearly about more than just one person, but if the events in the UK over the last few days have taught us anything at all it’s that you need the right people in place and doing the right things when they’re needed.

Heidi Soulsby’s resignation from Policy & Resources on Tuesday is a canary in the coal mine indicator of how bereft Guernsey now is of leadership, policy or purpose.

We can say this with certainty for two reasons. The first is easy and obvious to detect. It’s that chief minister/president of Policy & Resources Peter Ferbrache allowed the atmosphere in committee to degenerate to such a pitch that Deputy Soulsby felt leaving was the only course open to her. We can barely imagine how toxic it had become.

The benefit of having Deputy Soulsby (Guernsey’s first female deputy chief minister) on your team is she’s a listener and focused on strategy – achieving the best possible outcome even when difficult and in the face of opposition. Successfully bringing people and diverging views together is one of her hallmarks, as reforms – now apparently stalled – in Health and via the Partnership of Purpose demonstrated.

In this factional States, as has been widely observed, policy scrutiny is reserved for the other side. The ruling coalition challenge only those who aren’t in their pack or want to keep sweet, which is why we have a Budget seeking to spend more than it raises (at a time of fiscal deficit) and no serious questioning of rising costs at Health or Education.

This sweetheart approach was largely confirmed by Deputy Ferbrache himself earlier when attending a Scrutiny Management hearing and Deputy Yvonne Burford asked him about aspects of the Budget. The response? (I paraphrase) – ‘we can’t say no to well-presented cases for more money’.

Deputy Soulsby, we can be reasonably confident, would have been raising difficult points such as these in P&R but, as her resignation statement made clear, some of her colleagues didn’t want to hear. Interestingly, P&R members are refusing to be interviewed on this, so reporters can’t ask Deputies Mark Helyar and Dave Mahoney if they were particularly unwelcoming of her views and advice.

To be clear, in these litigious times, I make no suggestion that they are or were, but P&R has removed the ability to ask who the ‘some’ on the committee Deputy Soulsby was referring to are, which at best is unhelpful.

The second reason for highlighting that the island is now bereft of leadership, policy and purpose is the release earlier this month of 2022 data and analysis in the Facts and Figures statistical digest.

The information there is ‘intended to help inform discussion and decision making at all levels, including in the development of current and future government strategies and policies. Time-series information often best shows the impacts of existing policies and external factors on underlying trends,’ it says.

Go through it and the stand-out is how many of the key economic indicators are flat-lining or declining. GDP appears (there’s a lag in availability of data) to be down, and median earnings are down while the cost of living is savagely up.

This government, which cannot balance the books, spends 34% of all it removes from taxpayers and the economy on States pensions and welfare benefits – more than on healthcare – and a paltry 1% on economic development and tourism. Going for growth we are not.

The number employed – so vital for Guernsey’s economic future that positive population growth has just been agreed by the States – this year is the lowest since 2018 while there are between 2,000 and 3,000 currently advertised job vacancies, including in pressing areas like home insulation and green energy.

Home Affairs’ Rob Prow, the island’s migrationmeister, said here this week: ‘The island does not only need the necessary housing and infrastructure to support and attract increased migration, but also the population and migration controls to achieve it.’

Yet he and government colleagues have already overseen a chronic housing shortage while industry blames the existing population regime for staff shortages. Despite the population debate, nothing will change on these fronts any time soon, a make-or-break Moneyval inspection for finance looms and ratings agency Standard and Poors earlier downgraded the outlook for the island to negative. What will its next assessment be?

In short, as Rishi Sunak is telling everyone this week, there are some difficult decisions to take and, for us, the shape of Guernsey’s future is one of them.

So who will Deputy Ferbrache ask to replace Heidi? A Trott, St Pier or Parkinson perhaps, to get some knowledge, experience and heft on board? Or a nodding dog from the Blob of fellow travellers? I doubt any of those three I’ve named would contemplate joining the current P&R – which tells you quite a bit about the underlying reasons for Deputy Soulsby’s departure – so we shall see.

More fundamentally, however, what next? This Assembly has given up on containing expenditure and has no plan for increasing revenues. Its only ‘solution’ is to raise taxes and the impending review in that area will be to introduce GST at around 5% before hiking it subsequently because, under this P&R, the States has lost control of public finances.

Getting GST through the Assembly, however, is not guaranteed. Public opinion alone, suckered into voting island-wide for candidates allegedly promising to cut waste and do things more efficiently, will be neither kind nor gentle. So what happens, as many States members already expect, if the tax and spend package from P&R is lost?

Will that trigger – as it should – mass resignations? Could a P&R unable to pay the bills and with no credible plan to balance the books retain any legitimacy as the States’ senior committee and policy adviser? Can an entire Policy & Resources be replaced without a general election called to ask islanders what sort of economic future they want? Or asking their views on island-wide voting, shadowy ‘political parties’ and manifesto promises that evaporate on election?

Yes, you’re right. So far so speculative. But the Deputy Soulsby resignation shows how close we’ve come to straying into the Truss territory of untenable government.