Richard Graham: A masterclass before the mire

Observing States meetings from the public gallery isn’t a comfortable experience because the gallery was built at a time when the average Guernsey person was four feet six inches tall. I endured the discomfort last week in the interests of tasting the atmosphere in the refreshed Assembly and keeping an eye on dress standards. Some blokes still don’t know how to wear a tie, but apart from that, the Assembly as a whole passed muster.

As I watched Deputy Montague rise to begin the meeting with an update statement as president of Education, Sport & Culture, I asked myself this: could a brand-new, first-time deputy and president of a principal States committee possibly enjoy a more complete happiness than to return from the summer holiday with the task of telling the States Assembly how thrilled he and his committee colleagues are to confront their unsolicited inheritance of an intractably horrendous legacy from their predecessors, and then, as icing on the cake, to fight off a hostile challenge to an especially tricky item in that inheritance? Judging by his performance on the first day of last week’s States meeting, the first for several weeks, Deputy Montague would answer no, he couldn’t possibly have been happier. He seemed positively to relish delivering an ESC update followed by an intelligent, authoritative and well-judged response to questions and a potentially deadly sursis. And praise be, he did so with a complete absence of education gobbledygook. It was a masterclass in how to deal with both tasks. Coming this early in the new political term, he set a standard to which other committee presidents, without exception, would do well to aspire. What’s more, he had a beneficial effect on members. Miracle of miracles, all but a few raised their heads from their electronic gizmos to both watch and listen, and their questions rose to the occasion. Here’s an example. Deputy Goy asked an astute and topical question about artificial intelligence to which Deputy Montague responded with what for me was the outstanding epigram of the entire meeting. I quote: ‘Whatever does the thinking does the learning. If you export your thinking to AI, you’re also exporting the learning.’ Wow!

Question time wouldn’t be such fun if at least one hapless member didn’t fail miserably to put their question within the 30 seconds permitted. This time it was Deputy Oswald. An infinitely charitable Bailiff gave him 60 seconds in the desperate but fading hope that our new president of Health & Social Care might eventually get round to asking his question, before calling time on him. Deputy Oswald looked perplexed, poor bloke. Methinks that HSC meetings might drag a bit. Deputy Parkinson came to the rescue. He’s asked a few questions in his time. He put the question Deputy Oswald had intended. It took him all of seven seconds. I could almost hear the Assembly’s silent applause.

The meeting’s principal debate was of ESC’s projet de loi regarding governance of States schools and the challenge to it from Deputy Camp’s sursis. Given that the proposed legislation was a legacy of the previous ESC political membership, the current ESC members had to be on their mettle. And they were, all five of them, with Deputies Montague and Hansmann Rouxel to the fore. Speech by speech, a characteristic of the new Assembly began to emerge which I reluctantly found myself regarding as a curate’s egg. The seemingly unanimous determination to cleanse the Assembly of its previous toxicity is of course most welcome, but it soon became clear that members were so full of bonhomie that the art of robust but temperate challenge was in danger of disappearing. There’s no pleasing the likes of me, is there?

So, what prompted my unease? Here’s why.

I believe that there was a case to be made for devolving school governance by a different approach to that proposed by ESC, but in my book Deputy Camp made a hash of making it. Her speech was completely over the top in its contemptuous disparagement of the proposed governance boards. A touch of subtlety and balanced analysis might have won over members who had minds open to change. And yet, members opposed to the sursis seemed so intoxicated by happy-clappiness that instead of challenging Deputy Camp’s speech, they showered it with over-generous praise for its quality and even for her courage in bringing the sursis. I sat there thinking: that’s setting the bar for courage rather low. When did we stop taking it for granted that our deputies aren’t wimps? If members continue to conduct themselves as a mutual admiration society, I guess I’ll have to replace some of my customary leg-pulling with a bit of ‘bad cop’ interrogation.

Here’s another thought. Deputy Camp is not the first deputy, and will not be the last, to arrive in politics from the background of a business career under the apparent delusion that government can be done much as conducting a business. It can’t. And it shouldn’t. And yet, no deputy bothered to challenge her on it. Although it doesn’t necessarily involve harder work, government is far more difficult work. Anyone with a brain larger than a petit pois can run a successful business, but achieving anything in government demands far more of those charged with doing it on behalf of an entire, diverse community. This delusion wouldn’t matter much if it didn’t make those deputies who are under it a positive danger to good government until such time as they rid themselves of it – which some never do. That’s why whenever I hear a deputy prefacing a speech with reference to their many years of success in the world of business, I’m overcome with nervousness rather than enthusiasm.

I’ve previously commented that Deputy Gollop isn’t constructed for speed, so it was neither surprising nor disappointing that he voted to continue talking endlessly about devolving school governance rather than actually doing something to get it going. But it was depressing that experienced deputies Bury and Burford seemed just as keen as the Assembly’s legendary prevaricator to keep fighting the battles of the last political term rather than move on. It would take a book the size of War and Peace (around 1,300 pages since you ask) to accommodate all that these deputies don’t know about education generally and specifically about what the best governance of schools looks like, and yet there they were, deaf to the judgement of those whose deep knowledge of the subject wouldn’t fit into a book double that size. There was a hint of arrogance and disrespect in the apparent attitude of the sursis supporters to those who have put themselves forward to serve as interim governors. They seemed to regard the latter as so gullible, dim and timid as to need our gallant deputies to protect them from the ESC ‘centre’ which they continue to portray as a band of perfidious saboteurs in waiting. At this so-called ‘centre’ that serves some paranoic deputies as a convenient bogeyman, there are seven key officers who have the ear of the new committee in matters of primary, secondary and post-16 education. I know them from first-hand experience of working alongside them, and in all but one case I have no doubts at all about their personal enthusiasm for meaningful devolution of governance. They should not be disrespected or judged on the loyalty which, as civil servants, they were obliged to give to last term’s ideologically driven ESC membership.

The irony is that in anticipating future sabotage from the centre, the backers of the sursis were all looking at the wrong potential source of it. I predict that it will be from within P&R that resistance to complete devolution of school governance will come. How so?

Treasury won’t like it. Treasury finds it painful enough to let politicians have money to spend, let alone hand it over to a bunch of school wallahs to spend as they like.

HR won’t be happy either. They’ll make the point that even if the school governing bodies are given the freedom to recruit teachers, those teachers will remain employees of the States, in which case States HR will be needed to avoid the anarchy of school governing bodies competing amongst themselves by setting different salary scales and conditions of service.

Property Services will be experiencing a collective heart attack at the prospect of schools being given ownership and control of States real estate. Just imagine, Property Services would no longer be able to order the move of civil servants from Frossard House to replace students kicked out of their Sixth Form Centre at Les Varendes. So, by my reckoning, it will be Deputies de Sausmarez and St Pier who will have to come up to the plate if substantial devolution of governance to schools is to be achieved.

When it came to the vote, Deputy Camp and her seconder were supported by only five deputies, including three committee presidents in the persons of Deputies Burford, Bury and Williams. I hope their own committees’ future proposals for legislation guarantee the same certainty of precise, detailed outcomes that they accused ESC’s projet de loi of lacking. I shall be watching.

The meeting concluded with a hint of the personal niggle that characterised much of the previous political term. P&R requested that the next meeting’s schedule be adjusted by a day to enable Deputies de Sausmarez and Falla to attend an important meeting in Normandy on one day and be present in the Assembly on the next day when members will elect Deputy Le Tocq’s replacement on P&R. An indignant Deputy Kazantseva-Miller objected – it would mean that she and her committee had made inconvenient re-arrangements for no purpose and would set a dangerous precedent. Looking at the big picture, P&R’s request seemed reasonable. There was no precedent to set: Deputy Kazantseva-Miller had apparently forgotten – or chosen to ignore – that the States had already made a similar adjustment to its schedule back in April. She’d even voted in favour of doing so. All deputies had been notified of P&R’s request in advance, and none had objected. It was important that our Chief Wallah represented Guernsey at the meeting in Normandy; after all, it wasn’t as if the meeting was as inconsequential as a gladhanding, photo opportunity with politicians in Jersey. And surely the P&R president should be enabled to participate in the election of a deputy alongside whom she will have to work as a committee colleague for the next four years. And wasn’t this a classic case of Guernsey’s ability to be nimble and fleet of foot?

I wonder if there was more to Deputy Kazantseva-Miller’s manoeuvring than meets the eye; perhaps it will be revealed during the election to fill the P&R vacancy on 25 September. Come the vote, only three members had caught a whiff of the Kazantseva-Miller miff and liked it. Curiously, although the Economic Development president had presented her objection as her committee’s view, only one of its members supported her, and – irony of ironies – one was absent. What a pity that a good meeting had to end on such a petty and sour note.

I finish in lighter vein. Readers will have forgotten my last sketch seven weeks ago when I mentioned that I’d once had my hand read by a fortune teller at the Epsom Derby. Any reader who hasn’t forgotten must have had an extremely sad and boring summer holiday. The sketch I filed referred to a ‘gypsy fortune teller’ but a misplaced, albeit well-intentioned, bit of wokery intervened and the printed version omitted any reference to a gypsy. ‘So what?’ you may ask. Well, I’ll tell you ‘what’. It irked me. And still does. Just a little. Apparently, a previous mention of gypsies had caused offence. Such an explanation is a red rag to this particular bull. While I never intend to upset any reader, I acknowledge that if my sketches are to avoid the cardinal sin of blandness, I’m bound to upset a reader here and there. There may be readers for whom being upset, insulted or outraged is an addictive hobby. For them, my stuff is essential reading, guaranteeing a regular fix on which they depend for their personal fulfilment. But genuinely sensitive souls for whom the mere sight of the word ‘gypsy’ is upsetting, should simply avoid my sketches like the plague and stick with Postman Pat or Thomas the Tank Engine. Besides, being upset by the word ‘gypsy’ is to misunderstand it completely. It’s an honourable description. The Epsom Derby is well known as a key event in the gypsy community calendar. They gather there on the Sussex Downs each year, plying their various trades at their stalls. Had I asked my fortune teller if she’d be proud to be referred to as a gypsy, I’m pretty sure what her answer would’ve been.

And here’s the real reason for getting this off my chest. I wouldn’t want readers to think that I’d go to any old fortune teller. Only the genuine article would do for me. A chap has his standards.