“UNTIL we have the confidence to be ourselves, I think we are always going to let the public down.” They are words which might easily, and regularly, have slipped into the lines of one of the many columnists who have used these pages to descry the seemingly irresistible growth in public sector spending, following what they continually see as big branches being grafted onto small boughs.
Put more simply, we are now a billion-pound island, both in terms of borrowing, and separately of public spending; so many have said it, the words have lost much of their meaning. The fact that we are spending too much, and that has become unsustainable, is near universally accepted – when did you last read a cogent analysis from someone arguing that actually, Jersey needed to loosen the public purse strings, and had become addicted to parsimony?
But despite that apparent agreement, little seems to change – “we have no choice” seems to be a common answer, which is the customary position of the inept or lazy. Once that is accepted, all responsibility dissolves into the sand.
That’s why the opening quote is interesting, coming as it did not from a perennial government critic, but from the Chief Executive Officer of the Government of Jersey himself. Andrew McLaughlin has led the public sector for two-and-a-half years. This is his watch, yet it appears to be one he is deeply unhappy with.
Self-evidently, the Government of Jersey has become something of a super-tanker, which takes time to turn effectively – memories of the rattling ‘change train’ driven by Charlie Parker are perhaps testament to that.
But still, the Island deserves Mr McLaughlin’s blunt assessment of why that change has clearly been harder to practically deliver than he might have envisaged, given that his words suggest those aspirations still remain unfulfilled in all but the vision of them – and with the disruption of a General Election still to come, it is reasonable to assume they will remain so, until his successor takes over. Will they have the political support for quicker or deeper change than we have seen, so far?
In the quotation above, he draws attention to a lack of local confidence – put simply, that we import big solutions from elsewhere, solutions which are as aspirational as they are unnecessary. And we do that, because we lack the confidence to find our own way, one that suits Jersey.
The world is not currently lacking in confident leaders. But it seems on our shores, there is a vacancy for someone who can make Jersey believe in itself again.
