No prizes for guessing 2010 Villain of the Year

LOST CAUSE OF THE YEAR

Every year, they somehow find it: a subject that almost no one who’s not actually in the States cares about, a subject that doesn’t really affect anyone that much and that doesn’t go anywhere.

Choosing States reform is cheating, really, because it comes up every year. Going for GST exemptions doesn’t really work either, because it’ll happen sooner or later – and so the ‘lost’ part of the whole ‘lost cause’ sentiment falls down slightly.

And that’s why the Lost Cause of the Year is the suspended police chief Graham Power/Napier Report/shredded notes sagazzzzzzzz… hang on, sorry, dozed off for a moment there.

This is a cause that managed to drag in two politicians who normally show a fairly good grasp of political awareness and sense (Deputy Bob Hill and St Helier Constable Simon Crowcroft) as well as a whole bunch without any into thinking there might have been either a) a point to all of this, or b) some political capital in it. There wasn’t. There isn’t. Let it go.

MOMENT OF THE YEAR

How shocking was the States decision to dodge even talking about a pay cut by using an obscure procedural device? Put it this way: Senator Ben Shenton (whose Business Plan amendment was ducked) was rendered speechless, and that doesn’t happen often.

Midway through votes on cutting school milk, funding for Durrell visits and God knows what else, to refuse to even countenance a debate on slicing their own pay did very little to improve the public standing of States Members.

They get an unnecessarily hard time now and then, but in a single morning in September they managed to justify the idea of a group of people out of touch with the rest of us, out of ideas and out for themselves.

The hysterical responses from affronted politicians to this newspaper’s coverage of the story somehow only made it worse. If there was a low-point to 2010, this was it.

SHOCK OF THE YEAR

What do you even call a political party with one member? Well, in Jersey we’d probably call it the Jersey Democratic Alliance.

The surprising news that the three-quarters of its elected members had jumped ship not long after the other quarter – Deputy Geoff Southern – finished an embarrassing fifth in the Senatorial by-election was one of the weirder stories of the year.

While the amount of letters that party members write to this newspaper appears to have risen at the same rate that the JDA’s membership has declined, you’d be hard-pushed to call 2010 a great year for a political party that was going to take Jersey politics by storm when it was launched in 2005.

The fact that the other three members – Deputies Shona Pitman, Trevor Pitman and Debbie De Sousa – wised up to the idea that membership of the JDA was bad for their electoral health doesn’t necessarily bode well for the party’s future either.

HERO OF THE YEAR

Bearing in mind that last year’s winner was a piece of stationery, this was quite a tough call.

What States Member could join Senator Alan Maclean’s ringbinder as an Official Week in Politics Hero of the Year?

If you thought that the answer was anything other than ‘none of them, obviously’ then you really haven’t been paying attention over the last 12 months.

Anyway, the winner is Advocate Mike O’Connell.

He’s the one who told the Royal Court that then-Housing Minister Terry Le Main had pestered the Law Officers’ department to drop a prosecution, and then to go easy on the bloke when they refused.

What made that a slightly bigger deal was that the bloke a) had helped Senator Le Main out with campaigns for decades and b) was accused of breaking the Housing Law that Senator Le Main was responsible for administering.

And he did all of this without any boring debates that went nowhere, with no broken promises, and no messing about.

One quick speech in the Royal Court, and a week later the Housing Minister has quit. Not only is that more bang for your buck, it also presents a slight problem for the conspiracy theorists who reckon that we’re run by a shadowy cabal of senior politicians and lawyers who protect each other’s nefarious deeds.

VILLAIN OF THE YEAR

Oh come on, who else?

Who else cranked up taxes after promising voters that he wouldn’t? Who else launched an almighty set of spending cuts and then gave one of the biggest spending departments a free pass when they said they didn’t fancy it?

Much like cowboy films, politics needs a bad guy. But it’s unusual to have someone embrace the role with as much enthusiasm as Treasury Minister Philip Ozouf.

At this rate, you wouldn’t be too surprised if in 2011 he started wearing a black cape, stroking a long-haired white cat in press conferences and finishing every sentence by throwing his head back and screaming ‘mwahahaha!’