Richard Graham: Coming together is a beginning...

Unusually for me, I attended the four days of States meetings convened to elect members of the newly-constituted Assembly to their various positions of governmental responsibility. I wanted to ‘read the room’ and get an early inkling of the Assembly’s ambience.

When I served as a States deputy, I used to sit in my corner with a good view of the debating chamber, looking and listening as the debates meandered their way around me, thinking thoughts but never able to say them out loud. This was just as well, because some of them were outrageous.

Now, courtesy of the editor, I can safely invite readers to share my thoughts as they occurred to me while watching members decide who was going to do what in our new government. Deputies and readers of a delicate disposition are hereby warned.

Tuesday

Viewing the Assembly from the public gallery as members gather for the first time to elect this term’s 'chief wallah', I’m reminded of those far-off (in my case) first days at school. New boys (no girls in my time) high on nervous excitement, uncertain about what’s allowed and what’s forbidden; fifth formers trying to look cool, keen to show off their easy familiarity with the surroundings; sixth formers casually ambling about as if they owned the place; all of them watched over benignly by prefects accustomed to running it.

It hasn’t taken me long to spot hints as to who the most inveterate chatterboxes might prove to be, and which members are so addicted to their smartphones, tablets and laptops that their attention to a speaker will rarely exceed 30 seconds before it drifts away and retreats into the virtual reality of their own little cyber world. There’s a lot of talk just now about keeping childhood smartphone-free. Why only childhood?

One new member arrived dressed in shorts and has since left and returned wearing trousers, presumably having been advised to change. I’m intrigued. After all, they were tailored shorts and longer than some skirts I can remember being worn in the Assembly. With global warming, why not smart Bermuda shorts and knee-length socks? On second thoughts, having pictured some deputies, perhaps not.

Each candidate for the P&R presidency has 10 minutes to present their case for election to the top job. I sense that the scene cries out for potential leaders to look members in the eye, tell them the story of the next four years of government and inspire them to play confident parts in that story as a team.

Oh no! All three of them have chosen to make their case by reading a script from an electronic device of some sort or other.

Welcome to leadership by laptop. Did Henry V, on St Crispin’s Day, reach for a vellum scroll from which to read his Agincourt battle cry as his band of brothers waited like greyhounds in the slips? Did Arthur Scargill get the miners fired up only after he’d asked them to hang on a bit while he found his notebook? When was it that the art of fixing an audience with a look and talking to them off-script was lost?

Perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on our deputies; after all, they’re merely reflecting what’s now the norm. It’s not just in our political circles that ‘safe but dull’ has become expected; it’s a national phenomenon.

Controversial court cases always end with some wing-collared lawyer or other standing on the court steps reading robotically from a digital thingummy to tell a bunch of over-excited journalists how their client is feeling at having won or lost. It’s the same with major incidents when hapless police officers are sent out to recite a script written for them by some legal or PR bod for whom the words ‘interesting and revealing’ are the stuff of nightmares. Why can’t they just talk to us instead of reading to us? Mind you, it’s hard to make eye contact with members when so many of them are obsessively eyes-down on their own electronic gizmos. Throughout the speeches, there’s a newbie near the door who has scarcely raised his head at all from his slavish fixation on the smartphone cradled close to his chest. Perhaps he thinks someone is going to steal it from him.

Selecting the chief wallah offers scant scope for members to make fools of themselves, but so far one or two have been determined to grab even a limited opportunity to do so. Deputy Collins has just asked a question of stunning inappropriateness which the Bailiff has disallowed. My neighbour in the public gallery whispers into my ear: ‘You can see why it took him three attempts to get himself re-elected.’ I could reply – but won’t – that some members are mystified how he made it this time. Who knew that there are more than 5,000 bowls fans in Guernsey?

Deputy Goy has just asked a question about tax loopholes while instructing the candidates how not to answer it. Perhaps someone could take him aside and explain that unless the Assembly’s rules for question time are amended, they don’t allow questioners to dictate the answers. The clue is in the title... apparently.

On the bright side, members had three able potential leaders from whom to choose, and they’ve made their choice via the first ballot. That’s emphatic enough to assure Deputy de Sausmarez that she has a strong mandate, but falls short of encouraging her to think she can walk on water.

Wednesday

The new-look, promise-to-be-different Assembly is gathered for a second time, having indicated its mindset yesterday by slickly electing its chief wallah at the first time of asking. How impressive was that as a sign of commitment to getting things done. Oh dear! Such optimism for the future is already proving too much for some surviving relics of the previous Assembly’s penchant for constitutional navel-gazing rather than for actually doing stuff.

Rome may not be burning, but in a convincing audition for the role of Guernsey’s very own Nero, Deputy Inder has just signalled his intention to fiddle while it isn’t. He’s proposed to change the rules by which the Assembly, its members already straining at the leash, are about to conduct the sole business before it; namely, to elect Deputy de Sausmarez’s four colleagues on P&R. Three of the previous Assembly’s notorious droners (Deputies Gollop, Matthews and Kazantseva-Miller) have sprung up to support him, scarcely able to believe their luck on being presented with such an early opportunity to make a speech. Everywhere I look, eyes are rolling. It’s an optimistic sign for the future that none of the newbies have been prepared to waste their maiden speech on such trivia, although Deputy Camp may in time come to regret that her first ever contribution to the government of this Bailiwick will go down in history as having seconded a proposition that totally failed to read the room and has just died a miserable death at the vote. Although defeated, the proposition could serve usefully to warn us that the previous Assembly’s cultural obsession with debating things that government needn’t be doing while putting off debating things government needs to be doing, still lives on in the person of some of its survivors. I hope that deputies fresh to Assembly membership will quickly squash it before the culture becomes embedded, but it’s disappointing that when it came to the vote, four of them (Deputies Dorrity, Goy, Malik and Niles) have joined Deputy Camp in the navel-gazers fan club.

Perhaps they’re unaware that if there’s a case for changing the rules, there’s a strange beast named the States Assembly & Constitution Committee whose remit includes – yes, you’ve guessed it – proposing changes to the Assembly’s rules.

As it happens, lost time hasn’t proved to be an issue. The new chief wallah’s four nominations haven’t been challenged, and it’s all been done and dusted before widespread bum-ache has set in. I’m told that the identities of Deputy de Sausmarez’s preferred candidates were revealed to the media before they were made known to members of the Assembly. I hope that’s not true, but if it was, it was discourteous and wouldn’t have been a good start.

I’ll keep my thoughts about the composition of the new P&R team to myself, but I’ll share two related points. The first is to welcome Deputy Helyar’s statesman-like willingness to second all four nominations. Coming from the members’ second preference for the role of chief wallah, it’s a significant action that promises well for the future cohesion of the new Assembly. Deputy Burford deserves high praise, too. Second in the general election poll and with an admirable track record, a place on P&R was hers for the asking. That she hasn’t asked for it is because she’s noted, correctly, that to lose all the big hitters to P&R membership wouldn’t be in the best interests of the States overall. It would leave some, perhaps too many, key government departments being led by members – how can I put this charitably? – whose competence to lead is yet to be evidenced.

Friday

Now for the election of committee presidents. Not many in the public gallery today.

First up is Economic Development. I’m the only adult in Guernsey who thinks we should scrap this committee. It’s not that its members don’t do anything; I accept that they probably work very hard, especially when it comes to its fabled talent for channelling loads of moolah from the taxpayers into the private sector. It’s just that I’ve never seen any evidence that anything they busily do has any effect whatsoever on Guernsey’s economy, which has always gone its own way irrespective of, and sometimes despite, whatever the committee members do or don’t do. If the economy booms, they take credit for it, but if it stagnates or declines, they blame forces beyond their control. The only argument for retaining the committee is that it wouldn’t look good if we didn’t. Apart from that, the committee might just as well be populated by a tribe of baboons. Not that any sensible person would agree with me.

Deputies Kazantseva-Miller and Blin are engaged in gentle, oh-so-polite combat over the right to preside over this essentially otiose committee and Deputy Kazantseva-Miller clearly looks to be most suited to the task. Deputy Goy has been called to put a question to them. What’s this? No sign of a question. He’s reading out a lengthy prepared statement, more like a mini lecture. Whoops, he’s just been timed out. Deputies who can’t put a question within the 30 seconds allowed are going to find the next four years a struggle.

I was right, Deputy Kazantseva-Miller has won... decisively.

Deputy Montague is the only candidate for the presidency of Education, Sport & Culture. He’s an experienced teacher, and a teachers’ union man at that. So it’s reasonable to ask the classical question, with him in charge who will guard the guards? Or as he might well put it, quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

It’s quickly apparent that we needn’t worry. He’s delivering by far the outstanding speech of this week. He’s actually looking at members and talking to them, not reading a script to them. Even the bloke addicted to his smartphone has raised his eyes and is listening. How refreshing to listen to a member who knows what he’s talking about when it comes to education but avoids delivering a patronising lecture to those who don’t. We are witnessing the replacement of drivelous, goopy educational gobbledegook by insight into Socrates and John Stuart Mill. His committee will have inherited some tricky stuff, but I can’t think of a leader better equipped to deal with it sensibly. Phew!

Up next is Employment & Social Security. Former Deputy Roffey will be a hard act to follow but Deputy Bury, the sole candidate, is only a couple of minutes into her pitch for the job and we can already see that cometh the hour, cometh the woman. Hers is a classy speech. Judging from the previous Assembly, she’ll have to defend against charges that most benefit claimants are idle scroungers and that her committee is generally out of touch with the real world of business whenever it proposes higher rates of minimum wage or anti-discrimination regulations. I get the impression that she’ll handle that well, constantly reminding herself that such allegations are usually made by members who would never consider putting themselves forward for membership of the committee from where they could influence the formation of social policy rather than wait to oppose it.

If Deputy de Sausmarez hadn’t landed the chief wallah job, it would’ve taken someone armed with a strong ormer hook to prise her off her Environment & Infrastructure rock. As it’s turned out, her replacement doesn’t have to arm-wrestle her for the leadership of a committee much of whose remit requires securing popular support for the unpopular. Its leader requires, inter alia, a thick skin and a pragmatic approach, both of which seem to be on offer from Deputy Gabriel, the sole candidate. He’s not exactly built for speed, but I sense that rather like the speed limits for which his committee is responsible, he’ll get us safely to where we want to be without causing much road rage.

Another lone presidential candidate is Deputy Oswald who wants to lead Health & Social Care. He’s a medical doctor, so the ‘who-guards-the-guards’ question presents itself again. It’s encouraging to note that as a consultant physician, one of his areas of special interest was that of intensive care. Methinks that should prove handy when dealing with his political inheritance.

I need to tread carefully – his predecessor had a special ‘Do not resuscitate’ sign ready for me if I ever found myself in the PEH.

Fortunately, I feel a certain bond with Deputy Oswald, having noted from his manifesto that he has a pet parrot. When I was a young officer in British Guiana, an Amerindian gave me an Amazon green fledgling which my soldiers and I raised. I sent him all the way home to Guernsey, courtesy of BOAC, as a present to my late mother-in-law. Greater love hath no son-in-law. In later life I inherited him. We used to chat a lot. Nothing to do with this States meeting, of course, but I did promise to share my thoughts as they occur to me.

Doesn’t time pass quickly when you’re having fun? Well it would if only the public gallery offered more legroom and softer seats. Bring your own cushion, is my advice. We’re now close to ending the day’s business. It’s mostly been routine.

Deputy Leadbeater has beaten off a challenge for Home Affairs leadership from Deputies Ozanne and Vermeulen. I wonder if the new president will nominate either of them to join his team. In a two-way contest to preside over the Scrutiny Management Committee, Deputy Gollop has just lost out to Deputy Sloan who appears to have more letters after his name than in it.

All the remaining positions were filled without challenge: Deputy Williams at the new Housing Committee... horses for courses; Deputy Burford at the Development & Planning Authority... wise choice; Deputy Hansmann-Rouxel at the States Assembly & Constitution Committee... uncontroversial I think; Deputy Gollop at the Transport Licensing Authority... for a well-earned rest in the Assembly’s private garden of rest; Deputy Strachan at Overseas Development & Aid... ideal; and Deputy Helyar at the States Trading Supervisory Board. Am I alone in being surprised that Deputy Helyar wasn’t challenged by Deputy Inder who, it’s said, owes his re-election to his promise to stand for leadership of STSB and, if successful, to then sack the Aurigny board? Those who voted for him on the strength of that promise may now be wondering why he didn’t even try.

So, where does that leave us? In my view, leadership of four of the States bodies is now infinitely stronger than it was last term. Leadership of the remainder, although different and not demonstrably stronger, is at least in capable hands.

As to which is which, I’m not telling.

Monday

A largely uneventful morning as the various committees are populated. Challenges to the presidents’ nominations are rare, and in all but one case, presidents get the membership they’ve asked for.

The exception is Home Affairs, where members’ narrow preference for Deputy Vermeulen over Deputy Curgenven sends Home’s president, Deputy Leadbeater, an ambiguous message. I sense headaches lie ahead, in which case the presence of Deputy Malik, a pharmacist, on the committee will come in handy.

The outcome of this final session, accidental or not, leaves Deputy Inder and Alderney Representative Hill with nothing more than membership of the Transport Licensing Authority where somnambulance is a greater threat than over-exertion. Deputies Blin, Curgenven and Goy haven’t been snapped up by any committee.

Now that island-wide voting has rendered traditional constituency work practically extinct, four deputies are left with nothing much more than reading States paperwork, holding committees to account as individual members and occasional participation in the States of Deliberation. Not bad for over £800 a week, eh?

So there you have it. Overall, it’s been an encouraging introduction to the political term ahead. Committees are broadly in good hands, comradely consensus seems closer than in recent times and in some cases personal ambition has been commendably subordinated to the best interests of the States overall. Deserving old hands have been promoted and at least one outstanding recruit has emerged from the fresh crop.

And what’s more, readers now know the sort of stuff that used to go through my mind when, as an elected deputy, I sat in the Assembly being paid a small fortune to do so. Shocking, isn’t it?