There comes a point in every political term when intentions and tone stop doing much work, and when a leadership committee has to be judged on whether it is actually pushing the system it claims to be leading.
For Guernsey’s Policy & Resources Committee that point has arrived earlier than many might have expected, not because the inheritance was uniquely difficult, but because six months in, there is still very little sense of where authority really sits.
Looked at individually, the members of Policy & Resources are capable people. Many are experienced, some have been through difficult terms before, and a few have spent years at the heart of island politics. That is precisely why the collective performance matters, because when people like this fail to produce clarity together, the problem is rarely intelligence and more often judgement, balance, or leadership.
By now, the principal committee should be setting the pace for the rest of government. Priorities should be clearer, papers should land with more certainty, and the Assembly should not be doing quite so much of the heavy lifting. Instead, the early part of this term has been dominated by two policy failures that were never really treated as failures.
The Government Work Plan arrived and was substantially amended on the floor. The Fiscal Policy Letter fared worse, being withdrawn before it could be tested at all. Neither outcome should have come as a surprise. Both reflected papers that had not carried the argument far enough beforehand and had not done enough listening before they appeared.
Those moments should have been uncomfortable. They should have prompted some quiet stock-taking about preparation and judgement. Instead, both were quickly reframed using the language of collegiate working, with amendment presented as collaboration and withdrawal dressed up as prudence. The Assembly did the work, and the centre focused on tone.
Collegiality has its place, particularly in a small jurisdiction where relationships matter, but it is a way of working, not a substitute for leadership. Once agreement becomes the aim, rather than the result of argument, dissent starts to feel awkward and challenge starts to look unnecessary. That is rarely how difficult decisions are made.
When systems fail, leadership choices become revealing. After Pearl Harbor, the United States navy could have doubled down on familiar thinking and appointed someone steeped in the doctrine that had just collapsed. Instead, Roosevelt chose Chester Nimitz, not because he was reassuring, but because he was different, and because he understood that the future would not be won by rebuilding the past.
Policy & Resources feels like the opposite instinct. It feels designed to reassure, and reassurance has become its default setting. Calm, careful, process driven, and wary of friction, qualities that in other circumstances might be strengths, but in this one begin to look like habits. This is not a period that rewards gentle management, even if gentle management feels more comfortable.
The president herself fits that pattern. Competent, cautious, fluent in the language of consensus, and skilled at keeping things moving without provoking rows. That has value, but leadership moments differ, and this one feels as though it calls for someone willing to unsettle the system rather than soothe it. That instinct shows up in the people around the table.
Gavin St Pier remains an influential presence, but recent performances have raised questions that would once have seemed unlikely. Matt Fallaize’s podcast interview was striking because it was not hostile. It simply conveyed the impression of someone not fully on top of his brief, hesitant where clarity was needed, defensive where authority should have been natural. When Scrutiny examined him on property services, the same impression lingered. Reputation was doing a lot of the work.
Focus is another issue. Charles Parkinson appears to be operating almost entirely on one track this term, territorial taxation for corporates, an idea that has come to dominate his contribution despite being highly unlikely to be deliverable and carrying obvious risk. At a time when most islanders are concerned about costs, services, and trust in government, this focus feels oddly removed.
Territorial taxation has become a one-trick pony in this political term. It is revisited again and again, increasingly predictable, and offers no realistic prospect of near-term benefit. What makes it more troubling is the sense that its champion shows little sign of seeing how it looks from elsewhere, where the risks are plain and the appetite thin.
Steve Falla brings polish and ease to the committee. He is personable, articulate, and comfortable in the role of communicator, which is hardly surprising given his background, and as the island’s international face he performs competently enough. The difficulty is one of balance. Policy & Resources does not struggle to explain itself. It struggles to persuade and to prioritise. Adding another strong communicator to a leadership team already heavy on presentation risks reinforcing habits that are already well entrenched.
Yvonne Burford is the hardest case to write about, because expectations were higher. I voted for her deliberately, expecting independence and a willingness to stand slightly apart from the prevailing mood. What I have seen instead is steady absorption. Always correct, always formal, never rude, but increasingly aligned with the collegiate culture that now defines the committee. When collegiality becomes the organising principle, dissent has a tendency to drain away, and politics starts to feel more institutional than real.
This sits awkwardly alongside recent writing by Richard Digard on the rise of official ‘Newspeak’, where problems become challenges, failures become learning, and retreat becomes prudence. Once a principal committee starts to believe its own language, urgency fades. Everything sounds reasonable. Nothing quite lands.
That description fits Policy & Resources rather too well. It helps explain how two major policy letters could stumble without triggering much visible reflection, and why, six months into the term, there is still no strong sense of grip at the centre.
None of this is to say that the members of Policy & Resources are poor politicians. Taken individually, they are serious and able people, which is exactly why the collective result matters. A leadership team exists to produce more together than it would apart, and on that measure this one is struggling.
Six months have already gone, and this is not a forgiving term. It is shaped by fiscal strain, public scepticism, and a shrinking margin for error, and yet there is still little sense that hard choices are being driven from the centre. Too much energy has gone into managing tone and maintaining consensus, and not enough into setting direction and forcing decisions through a system that plainly resists them.
It may be that the same people could perform better in different roles, under different leadership, or within a different configuration. But as currently composed, Policy & Resources does not look like a committee built to lead this term. It looks like one designed to keep things steady when what is actually required is change.
If Policy & Resources were to be reformed at the next States meeting, it would be surprising if the same people emerged in the same positions. Not because they have failed as individuals, but because the Assembly may conclude that the island now needs something different at the centre, less reassurance, more insistence, and a leadership team prepared to impose direction rather than simply negotiate agreement.
Guernsey does not lack ability, but it is now running out of time under a leadership structure that is not delivering the total rethink of the role of government that we need before looking at public service reform or tax reform.
