With six weeks between the last States meeting of 2025 and the first of this year, those of us desperate to be entertained by Guernsey’s political theatre company have had to look elsewhere. How else to explain how I found myself sitting in the meeting room at the Castel Douzaine last Wednesday morning, watching the cast taking their places for the latest performance of the Scrutiny Management Committee on tour.
The dramatis personae in this on-the-road version of the States thespian cast were a varied bunch. Stage right, Scrutiny was represented by four blokes. Its president, Andy Sloan, is an economist, formerly one of our senior civil servants and a bit of a legend in Jersey, but now a fledgling politician whose principal role in his latest reincarnation is to hold our senior civil servants and politicians to account. No surprise then that he bore the look of a cat about to dive into a dish of cream. Two non-States members supported him – advocate Peter Harwood, formerly a deputy and all-too-briefly our chief minister until Private Eye took unfair aim at him; and Mark Le Page, an experienced financial services hand whose deadest of pans offered the hope that there must surely be a sense of humour lurking deep within him, just waiting to escape.
Deputy Sloan’s right flank was closely defended by a senior member of the civil service’s elite praetorian guard who wore the stoical look of someone who had been told not to speak unless spoken to and was content with this role – if not exactly enthused or animated by it.
Stage left, representing P&R, sat Deputy St Pier. Clearly anxious to avoid typecasting, he was on welcome release from code of conduct performances and appeared in his preferred role as P&R’s leading man for productions to do with sums. The theatre scene used to include leading ladies but in a world that has left me far behind, the term ‘lady’ – rather like that of ‘actress’ – has fallen into desuetude, so we now have ‘female leads’. P&R’s female lead used to be known as the States treasurer, a role which we all understood, but she now performs as chief resources officer, a term calculated to be understood by none of us. The pair were there to respond to the panel’s scrutiny of the Fiscal Policy Framework, a curious beast which P&R will bring to the Assembly for debate later this month. We were, in effect, about to watch the equivalent of a regional preview prior to a proper premiere at the Old Vic.
Deputy Sloan launched the session with one of those crafty, disarming tactics that are familiar to those of us long in the tooth in this particular trade. Having suggested that he would start with a ‘nice, simple question’ he proceeded to ask one which was far from nice and simple. What – he wanted to know – was the point of this 28-page document that must have consumed many an hour of precious civil service time in the vital first few months of this new political term? Those weren’t his exact words, but that was the essence of the question they posed. What followed was a challenge for a thicko like me who was only there because it was too wet and cold to do anything outside. I was in the presence of experts after all, no matter they seemed to disagree with each other.
The performance lost no time in assuming the characteristics of a clash between two alien cultures struggling to understand each other whilst speaking in foreign tongues. I was reminded of a time, long ago, when for two days I occupied a three-man trench with two Scandinavian soldiers, one Norwegian the other Danish. Standing shin-deep in icy water whilst peering into a snowstorm was of little discomfort compared to the agony of having to listen to two mutually unintelligible blokes endlessly trying to communicate with each other.
One clash of culture between interrogator and interrogated last week was immediately apparent. Deputy Sloan detested adjectives whereas for P&R they were the sine qua non of the senior committee’s blood stream. Words like ‘appropriate, sustainable, long-term, affordable and proportionate’ made Deputy Sloan queasy and had him reaching for his Kwells. He wasn’t fond of principles and guidelines, either; the very mention of the words drained the colour from his face. On the other hand, he adored numbers, sums, figures, totals, percentages and rules. I bet he smears them on his breakfast toast, laces his lunch-time soup with number-shaped croutons and counts the number of peas one by one onto his dinner plate. And don’t talk to him about short, medium or long term; instead, give him days, weeks, months accompanied by a number, the sort of stuff you can get your head around, but more importantly stuff which enables him and his committee to hold other committees to account.
The P&R team’s problem was that they were a bit short on figures and numbers but had tons of adjectives which they were keen to off-load onto the Scrutiny panel. Result... stalemate.
If I were permitted only one adjective to describe the scene it would be ‘adversarial’. Each Scrutiny panel member had his own method of probing P&R’s defences.
Advocate Harwood was every inch the lawyer. I reckon that if there had been a judge present, we would have heard many a ‘if it pleases M’lud’.
When it came to bloodletting, Deputy Sloan assumed the role of sprightly picador. His trademark was a running series of painful, wounding jabs, accompanied for effect by much lifting of eyebrows, tilting of head, shifting of bum and a busy display of facial gymnastics and theatrical hands.
Mr Le Page presented a total contrast. His voice and face gave nothing away. He was the very definition of inscrutability. As I watched, I was reminded of someone, but for a time I couldn’t remember who. Then it came to me – one of those undertaker’s assistants whose lugubrious melancholy gives occasional way to the hint of a sympathetic smile designed to help grieving relatives through a difficult time. In Mr Le Page, Deputy Sloan’s excitable picador had found a cool matador ominously and calmly biding his time. So, when the Le Page coup de grace came after one and a half hours, it was all the more brutal for arriving without previous menace and for being delivered with a face so matter-of-fact and innocent of malice that he might have been merely announcing that it had started to rain outside.
And his verdict? ‘On the basis of what you have said, there’s an argument that says this document is pretty useless, isn’t it?’ Wow!
As for the P&R panel members, I think they sensed from the very beginning, as indeed I had sensed, that this play had only one ending and that heroic stoicism accompanied by much biting of lips and counting to 10 would be a thread through much of their script. They may well have consoled themselves with the thought that debate of the policy letter in the States Assembly will probably be a comparative doddle.
When the curtain closed, I was left with the thought that the Scrutiny Management Committee is in good hands. Its cast offers the prospect of further entertaining performances for which other States committees would be wise to start learning their lines in good time.
