Having agreed changes to electoral districts and with sensible propositions on the table to reduce the number of States Members, the whole sorry States reform saga descended into shambles and farce.
Twice Members have agreed the changes, or variants of them, in principle and then, at the final hurdle, they perform an about-turn to leave the States exactly where it was, unchanged and unimproved.
On 1 February this year, the JEP used this column to warn that doing nothing was not an option because of very real concerns about voter equity, the number of votes an elector can cast, and voter equality, the number of votes won by each representative to give them the same mandate. In other words, we have a system in which the extent of one’s political influence is a postcode lottery which benefits certain Members.
These issues might seem like the stuff of electoral anoraks, but they are barometers of the health of our democracy. They are also set within a context in which many feel a profound sense of dissatisfaction with the political system.
That does not just mean the usual suspects who make a lot of noise in this newspaper, on social media and in the States, but the thousands who do not air their feelings in public, but who demonstrate how they feel by not voting.
Election turnouts are woeful, the trust in Jersey’s political institutions is being seriously eroded, too many of Members are elected unopposed – the list goes on. It is hard to see just what those who derailed the reform proposals yesterday thought they were preserving in handing us back the status quo.
During yesterday’s debate, Members said that they were confused. The sorry truth is that either, after months to think through what they were looking at, they misunderstood the proposals or they feigned confusion to derail reform. Either way they have hardly covered themselves in anything resembling glory.
The whiff of self-interest which hangs over this latest horlicks and the apparent inability of Members to move forward because they are frozen in the headlights of tradition does little to help Jersey project an image of a modern, confident, self-critical and progressive Island.
Constable Simon Crowcroft said that a Royal Commission might be the only may forward. The trouble is that the States has so far spent years ignoring the recommendations of Sir Cecil Clothier and a referendum result, not to mention some very sensible arguments for reform.
