Andy Sloan: It was the swing wot won it

So this is my last column as an outsider. While I intend to keep up my monthly musings in the Guernsey Press, the easy default of blaming the government will soon be off-limits. Come Tuesday, I’ll be in the Royal Court myself, taking the oath – or swearing allegiance (apparently there’s a choice) – as I’m sworn in as a deputy.

The election campaign was a slightly surreal experience. Matt Fallaize asked me in my Guernsey Press podcast interview (which, by the way, were all excellent – I know lots of people used them to get to know the candidates) how I was finding the campaign. I replied, rather flippantly, that I was still looking for it. Four weeks later, I’m not sure I ever did find it.

I enjoyed the hustings I took part in – two independently organised and one with the BBC. It was nice to be rated one of the better performers at the BBC event, but honestly, there just weren’t enough of them to really connect with voters.

I genuinely believe island-wide voting is to blame. It made connecting with the electorate incredibly difficult. If you’ve just one parish to cover, it’s at least conceivable to try and reach every home. But with 27,000 properties across the island is impossible. Most candidates didn’t even try. For many voters, the campaign felt like something happening somewhere else, online, in small groups, on social media, or in a few organised echo chambers.

Most of the public will have seen or heard nothing from a candidate unless they actively went looking. That’s probably why the Guernsey Press podcasts were so popular – they were one of the few opportunities to hear candidates at length, and to hear them challenged.

I think the system needs revisiting, because I believe it’s partly to blame for the poor turnout. Forget the 74% turnout figure being bandied about – just 19,600 voted. That’s fewer than four in 10 of those eligible to vote. It’s not a sign of a healthy democracy.

Even among postal voters – who had to register, and then register again for a postal vote – one in five didn’t bother in the end. That’s not good. Choosing from more than 80 candidates and being allowed 38 votes was probably just too much for many.

And I’d like to see the turnout broken down by demographics. When turnout falls so low, the issue becomes just how representative is the voting public? It’d be interesting to see the differentials.

But enough, what did the people say?

If you listened to the Guernsey Press’ post-election podcast, you’ll have heard me talk about the swing. Because while there’s been plenty of post-election chatter about a rejection of the ‘toxic culture’ of the last States – and while housing and immigration were the biggest doorstep issues in my experience – there was a very clear demarcation between the fortunes of those who supported GST-plus and those who opposed it.

Of course, there were outliers, and idiosyncrasies – I’m not going to name names – there always are. But as Jon Snow might have said on the night: between the incumbents there was a general 14.5% swing – but it was asymmetric. It comprised a swing to the left of plus 4.9%, and away from the right of minus 9.6%. Or, more crudely – being anti-GST got you around 1,000 extra votes. Being pro-GST-plus lost you 2,000. If the incumbents had been two political parties, the average vote shares would have been 39.7% and 28.9%. I’m getting very ‘anoraky’ but within all this there were some very interesting movements against the swing. Jonathan Le Tocq’s net swing, after stripping out the GST-plus effect, surprisingly was larger than Lindsay de Sausmarez’s. But I fear I might be losing my readers (both of you) if I go any deeper.

Against that backdrop, I was very pleased – as a new candidate supporting GST-plus – to have been elected. And delighted with a respectable 6,000-plus votes. As I joked on the night, in the ‘centre-right, male, non-local’ category, I was a poll-topper.

There’s no getting away from it – those who argued against GST-plus are now in the clear majority in the States. The ‘fairer tax’ message resonated. And interestingly, quite a few candidates who were in favour of GST-plus still made sure to use the phrase ‘fairer tax’ liberally in their manifestos (ahem).

I used to joke that believers in fairer tax usually meant that they preferred it that someone else paid it. But it’s a dangerous joke nowadays. Perhaps it’s my economics training but I view the issue of fairness slightly differently, slightly dispassionately to the majority, that is with a more academic, less emotive bent – but then I did used to lecture on public policy economics. We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that taxation is a form of collective funding of collective services and fairness is that each pays a share based on their ability to pay. The subjective debate becomes about what share is fair. Opinions differ. Honest.

Last week, I was interviewed by the BBC about the States Accounts – yes, a few days before they were published. No, I hadn’t seen them; I was just aware of the numbers selectively released in the days before the election (which, as an aside, I thought was out of order). But it gave me enough to be confident about the underlying picture, and enough to provide an opinion.

I repeated a line I’d used throughout the campaign – that we’ve had a structural deficit ever since introducing zero-10, and that fixing our public finances in my opinion would require three things: introducing consumption taxes, reining in spending and reforming corporate tax.

The full quote was reproduced online, but if you’d heard the radio version, they just used the line on corporate tax. It gave the impression I’d come out as a full-fat campaigner for corporate tax reform. If you’d followed my campaign, you’d be aware that I regularly made this point about zero-10. My working assumption was always that we were supposed to use the breathing space it gave us to design a longer term sustainable, normalised corporate tax regime. I didn’t particularly lead with that view while campaigning and I didn’t feel the need to include the point in my manifesto.

In the interview, I also said the main message from the electorate was clear – every stone should be turned before GST is introduced. And the public clearly doesn’t believe the States has done that yet. It was interesting to see Lindsay de Sausmarez use almost the exact same wording the following day. Spooky. The States needs to listen, and in my view look very, very hard at spending.

A clear majority of the new Assembly was elected on a platform against GST-plus (like I said, not me). The thing about democracy is you’re supposed to heed the message of the people. There’s no point complaining the electorate ‘didn’t get it’, it’s not good politics. To maintain integrity, trust and accountability of our system, the issue has to be properly looked at.

Speaking to the Beeb, I said the fiscal situation didn’t appear to be quite as bad as made out last November, but that we were still clearly running a deficit. The accounts are now published, and nothing I’ve seen has changed my mind.

Broadly speaking, spending went up and income didn’t. Go figure. Whether it’s wages, staff numbers, or any other metric you choose – public sector growth continued, despite falling real revenues. That just has to stop. It’s being growing twice as fast as GDP for over 10 years now.

And one final point on the Accounts, yes, they’re an easier read now. But I still don’t agree with the treatment of investment returns as a line in the income statement. I’ve always maintained this view by the way; it’s not a new position.

And as for what I did include in my manifesto – unlike some, I didn’t offer a wide-ranging policy menu. Had I ranged more broadly, I might’ve included the policy proposals that I included in the conclusion section of This Is What A Rich Death Feels Like, my collection of Guernsey Press columns published shortly before the election (no, the timing was no accident). This included the need for much greater transparency and accountability in our policy-making and a greater emphasis on scrutiny. As it was, I kept my manifesto just to outlining three objectives – get politics working again, fix the public finances, and kick-start growth.

One thing’s for sure, this States is not going to be a cakewalk and at times it’s not going to be much fun for those of us elected (OK that’s two things). The choices ahead are going to be hard.

I hope I’m not tempting fate, but the experience of the campaign, spending time with the Nubes (new candidates), both during the campaign and this week at the various briefings provided for new deputies, gives me high hopes that we’ve got a decent shot at fixing the first of those. Fingers crossed. But genuinely we’ve really got our work cut out on the other two. Truth be told, it’s going to be a tough four years.