By Richard Digard
ON FRIDAY of last week, I had the slightly unusual task of launching a new political movement. Entitled Guernsey First, its aim was to help voters in the other island switch from putting a cross in a box for an individual and instead make the leap from politics based on personality to choosing candidates on the basis of group policies and a shared manifesto.
This has been somewhat forced upon us by the introduction of islandwide voting (IWV), by which Guernsey became a single electoral district, thus ending at a stroke a parish-based system that goes back to 1900, when elected Deputies were first introduced.
In turn, that breaks what was a quite intimate link between candidate and voter: doorstep campaigning, lively hustings meetings and quite probably personal knowledge of the individual who was seeking public office.
In short, if you can’t now rely on choosing Deputies you know well enough to be confident they’ll do the right thing by you and the island – and we’ve since learned that the hard way – then something has to change.
Yes, we had “political parties” in 2020, the first IWV election, but those were here-today-gone-tomorrow affairs that people, perhaps uncharitably, viewed more as vehicles for getting people elected than lasting campaigns for changing the island’s political landscape.
Hence my call for something more credible, a movement that has values and beliefs, life-improving policies and coherent (and costed) plans for implementing them if and when some of its supporters are returned to office. In essence, something with foundations, funding and a future beyond the next election.
Unlike Guernsey, however, this isn’t a surprise here. You’ve had Reform Jersey since 2014, working away quietly – and with some success – in pursuing its brand of social and economic justice. It now has ten elected Deputies, 5,700 followers on Facebook and no little influence in the Assembly itself.
But before you get too concerned, my “Guernsey First” is a notional movement, existing only in my Guernsey Press and Star column last Friday to illustrate that if islanders really are fed up with declining public services, budget deficits, the threat of big tax rises – especially GST – and shockingly poor and expensive treatment at the hands of Aurigny Air Services, they have to do something about it themselves.
Get organised, people. Take matters into your own hands. Decide what you want to improve and start the campaign. Blimey, you could even take advice from that Sam Mézec chap. He knows a bit about these things.
Coincidentally, I see from a JEP comment piece last week that there are similar concerns here. “We need a political system that is tailored to Jersey’s needs,” the headline declared. The Island was lucky to have retained Constables, the piece stated, but now needed a States Council – a secondary parliamentary body composed of former politicians who have served at least three terms.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, I disagree. The Constables are an undemocratic, unrepresentative block on political progress and have no place in a representative Assembly, while a States Council as suggested would quickly become a populist playpen, populated by members whose only obvious talent was political survival.
Where we do agree, though, is that both islands need political systems geared to their needs. What that should be, however, is where the arguments can begin.
Nevertheless, the underlying problem ought to be relatively easy to pin down. It’s too easy for anyone, no matter how ill-equipped or ill-prepared, to seek office. The role itself is poorly defined, largely voluntary in execution and lacking in performance criteria, while the remuneration is likely to appeal to candidates for all the wrong reasons.
That’s a way of saying that being a States Member carries with it enormous responsibilities and influence, while the complexities of discharging its obligations increase by the year. In other words, and certainly if it was your own business, you wouldn’t be staffing it with any random old Johnny sauntering in off the street claiming they’d be good at it.
Neither island puts any filter in place to ensure that those running for election are capable of the tasks ahead. Well, Reform Jersey might. It may be very choosy and turn down dozens of unsuitables ahead of each election, but that doesn’t help anyone not voting for a Reform candidate.
True, since around 2021 you’ve had The Progress Party, Jersey Alliance, and Jersey Liberal Conservatives as political parties or movements as well, but it’s not clear to me how active or effective they are.
As a result, I spent a bit of time for my Guernsey column drawing up an idiot’s guide (available on request) to creating a political movement and, while that’s quite a bit of work as you’d expect, the really surprising thing is the amount of effort needed to fund it, ensure that candidates and Deputies are adequately briefed and effective, and, particularly, disciplined.
That D word is a curiously dated one these days and certainly alien to Guernsey politics, but you have to ensure everyone toes the party line to make progress and, more importantly, retain the confidence of those who support the movement and voted for its candidates.
From this, then, you’ll gather I’m less worried about political systems and Senators, Constables or councils than I am about who we’re voting for in the first place. Even with Jersey’s ministerial system, it’s only after an election and the horse trading that goes with establishing a Chief Minister and his or her cronies that the direction of government can be set.
Voters actually have little say in that direction of government and less influence over its policies: the “manifesto”, the Government Plan, emerges after the event. To illustrate, the election was June 2022, but the Government Plan emerged at the end of the following year.
Gov.je says that “the Government Programme reflects the issues that are most important to Islanders as expressed during the election”, but that’s blatant nonsense. Why? Because you have 32 independent States Members in an assembly of 49. Reform Jersey gained ten, Jersey Alliance gained a sizeable share of the popular vote but just a single seat and the newly founded Jersey Liberal Conservatives and Progress Party, which consisted of the JLC–Progress coalition, received two and one seats respectively.
So you may have voted for specific parties or policies, but you certainly haven’t got them in the direction of this States.
It’s the same in Guernsey of course. There, it’s been calculated that fewer than 35% of Deputies are actually voted in by people who want them. Yes, that’s right – 63.6% of all votes in our 2020 election were effectively wasted.
If you’re happy with this state of affairs, in which a Council of Ministers you probably didn’t vote for in the first place divvy up the available cash in a manner you’ve had no active say in, then fine. It’s your island and you might even think they’re doing a great job for you.
If you’re not happy and believe government isn’t properly reflecting the needs of Jersey, then there’s a further problem. The current system actively prevents any meaningful change at the next election, for the reasons I’ve outlined.
So if you want to vote for policies rather than personalities, then you do need a choice of candidates singing, as it were, from the same hymn sheet. Which means a choice of properly founded, funded and future-proofed political movements.
Unless you’re a natural Reform Jersey supporter, I suspect that means something of a centre-right persuasion. But don’t worry about upsetting Deputy Mézec – I’m sure he’d relish a bit of competition.
