Whatever one might think of the recent tectonic shifts across the water, the arrival of Mr Burnham in Number 10 marks a distinct shift in political aesthetics. He will never be ‘Andy’ in my book, the casual, first-name familiarity demanded by modern political marketing has always felt a touch forced, though I do wholeheartedly applaud his signature black T-shirts.
As someone who is equally fed up with the uncomfortable, performative ritual of office attire, there is something deeply satisfying about a man who looks at a tailored suit and decides that a crisp, dark crew neck gets the job done just as well.
Yet beneath the sartorial commentary lies a more consequential point. Mr Burnham’s political brand, honed during his years in local executive government, was built on a simple premise – visible, tangible delivery. He was not interested in being a parliamentary creature floating through policy seminars in Westminster; he wanted to control the buses, build the housing, and run the region. He positioned himself as a deliverer in a system overcrowded with talkers.
It brings to mind a famous taxonomy once outlined by Tony Blair, who observed that politicians generally fall into three distinct camps – the reactionaries, the commentators, and the doers.
If you apply Blair’s triad to Guernsey, the results are both illuminating and deeply alarming. For all our pride in our unique consensus model of government, the island has spent the last decade constructing a political architecture that nurtures reactionaries, elevates commentators, and quietly smothers doers. If Guernsey is to navigate the fiscal and demographic headwinds currently bearing down on us, this dynamic must be inverted. We desperately, urgently need more doers.
To understand why the island feels perpetually stuck in second gear, one must look at how Blair’s three archetypes manifest within the States of Deliberation.
The reactionaries: guardians of inaction
In Blair’s framing, reactionaries are defined by a visceral fear of change. They retreat into nostalgia, reflexively treating any proposed reform as an existential threat to identity or stability.
In Guernsey, reactionism is rarely crude or blustery; it wears the respectable cloak of ‘island tradition’ and ‘fiscal prudence’. Whenever a major structural challenge is brought before the Assembly, be it tax reform, housing development, healthcare infrastructure, or air connectivity, the reactionary instinct is immediate: Is this really necessary right now? Shouldn’t we preserve what we have?
The fundamental flaw in the reactionary world view is a structural blindness to real risk. Reactionaries obsess over the risk of action, e.g the financial cost, the political push-back, the disruption. But they are entirely blind to the compound, creeping risk of inaction. Inaction does not preserve the status quo; it simply ensures that our infrastructure decays, our young people leave, and our public finances slowly bleed out.
The commentators: the process junkies
Commentators are the observers, proceduralists, and policy hawks. They love the process of politics i.e the debate, the scrutiny, the cross-examination, and the endless drafting of amendments, far more than they care about the actual results They thrive on radio interviews, social media threads, and parliamentary clashes.
In Guernsey’s non-party, consensus committee system, commentators have found their natural ecosystem. Because deputies carry individual mandates without a binding government manifesto, every debate becomes an open-ended symposium of sorts. Commentators flourish here because they can critique proposals from every conceivable angle without ever having to propose a viable, deliverable alternative. They treat policy reports as pure intellectual exercises rather than operational blueprints for action.
They are the primary drivers of Guernsey’s endless ‘review loop’. When faced with a complex problem, the commentator’s answer is never to make a tough decision and execute it; it is to commission another feasibility study, form a sub-committee, and or consult the public for a fourth time on facts that were already established five years ago. Commentating gives the comforting illusion of work while guaranteeing that no one ever has to bear responsibility for an outcome.
The doers: the pragmatic deliverers
Doers are the pragmatic people of action. They accept that no policy is ever mathematically perfect, that every decision involves trade-offs, and that real-world leadership requires taking some calculated risks. They measure success not by the eloquence of their speeches in the States chamber or the length of their policy letters, but by the implementation of policy; e.g shovel-in-the-ground outcomes: houses built, schools opened, modern digital infrastructure deployed, and budgets balanced.
In Guernsey, however, the doer is an endangered species. Under our current system, any deputy or committee attempting to actually do something is immediately surrounded by a coalition of reactionaries who oppose the change and commentators who demand three more years of consultation. Tied up in procedural knots, many doers simply exhaust themselves or retreat into frustration.
Why consensus governance is trapping us
Guernsey’s system was designed with noble intentions. Without political parties, decision-making was supposed to be collaborative, thoughtful, and free from partisan dogma. But in practice, a system with 38 independent mandates and no executive leadership creates an accountability vacuum.
When everyone is responsible for governance, nobody is. A principal committee can draft a sensible policy, spend two years refining it, and watch it get picked apart on the floor of the Assembly by a barrage of uncoordinated amendments from commentators who may never have to implement the wreckage they create.
The result is a culture of systemic risk aversion. It is politically safe in Guernsey to be a commentator; you can spend four years criticising the government’s failures without ever risking a mistake of your own. It is equally safe to be a reactionary; preserving the past is always popular with those who benefited from it. The only person taking a genuine career risk is the doer, that is, the politician who puts their head above the parapet to propose a hard choice and push it through to completion.
This incentive structure is ruining our capacity to govern. We face a structural budget deficit, an ageing demographic profile that threatens our healthcare capacity, and a housing market that is pricing out younger islanders, as well as some of the very key workers our economy relies upon. These are not problems that can be solved by polished speeches or another working party. They require decisive, sustained operational execution.
Empowering the doers
How do we break out of this cycle? We cannot simply wait for the political structure to reform itself; we must intentionally shift our political culture to value delivery over debate.
First, voters must start judging politicians by their output rather than their commentary. At election time, we are routinely swayed by those who sound sharpest on the radio or write the most indignant manifestos. We must start asking harder, more operational questions: What have you actually delivered? Which projects did you push across the finish line? Where did you take a hard decision and stick to it?
Second, the States must learn to treat consensus as a means to an end, not an end in itself. Consensus is valuable when it builds momentum behind a decision, but when it becomes a requirement for every step of implementation, it simply hands a veto to the loudest reactionary in the room. Real leadership means building a working majority, accepting the trade-offs, and getting on with the job.
Finally, we need politicians who are willing to embrace the spirit, if not necessarily the exact wardrobe, of the pragmatic deliverer. Mr Burnham’s rise in the UK was enabled because voters grew utterly weary of apparent inaction and turned toward someone who focused on regional execution. Guernsey needs that same pivot.
Less performance, more pragmatism. Fewer working groups, more diggers in the ground. More people willing to shed the uncomfortable formal suits of political posturing, roll up their sleeves, in a black T-shirt or otherwise, and simply get things done. Guernsey’s future depends on whether we have the courage to choose them.
