By Lindsay Ash
NOW we are well into the second year of this Assembly I feel that I can safely answer the questions often put to me.
Namely: do you regret launching a party? What did you hope to achieve? And: why did it fail?
These are my views. Other Alliance candidates may see things differently.
I have lost count of the number of people who said to me: “You know if it wasn’t for you doing this party thing you’d have got back in”. Firstly, that’s highly debatable and, secondly, when Gregory Guida, Rowland Huelin and I got together, the last thing we had in mind was whether it made us more or less electable.
We had looked at the system during the time we were in the States and decided that it didn’t work. I think, 18 months into this new Assembly, our judgment was fairly accurate. We also looked at the rise of Reform Jersey, who were offering a united socialist alternative, and decided that Jersey needed something that represented what you might wish to call the “taxpayer, or middle Jersey”.
Our aim was to take people off Facebook and Twitter and give them a genuine voice and a say in the running of the Island. We wanted to build a proper party, where people could attend an annual conference and vote on what the policy should be on the big issues. To my mind this was perhaps the most important part of the exercise – to genuinely get a buy-in from Islanders so that they really could have a say in what went on, rather than watching from a distance.
From a government point of view we hoped to provide a stable set of policies that could be put across to civil servants on day one, rather than having a group of individuals getting together over a number of weeks, then all deciding what to do – and then, as we are seeing now, falling out as they have no common ground and nothing to bind them.
Obviously we were playing catch-up, as we only had a short period of time to put our message across, form a party and recruit people who wished to stand.
Ironically it was Deputy Montfort Tadier who said to me that our difficulty would be in recruiting good-quality candidates in sufficient numbers; he was correct, as we had wanted 20-plus people, but didn’t achieve this.
This was not helped, of course, by having two other centre-right parties vying for “business”. We did, however, recruit enough members to run a candidate in every single constituency, thus giving everyone in the Island a chance to vote Alliance should they wish.
It is often said by Jersey’s chattering classes that we need “better-quality people” standing. Well, we had among our band someone who set up her own finance company, a chartered accountant, a care director, a former States Member and journalist, a former political leader of the City of London and company chairman, a person with 30 years’ experience in information technology, a senior building society executive with UK political experience, a highly successful entrepreneur, a well-known and successful figure in Jersey hospitality and the list goes on… We had no joy – go figure, as they say in the US.
The big question, then, is why did it fail? We had decided to fight an election in a very fair way (against my better judgment) and not indulge in what one could describe as UK-style electioneering. Looking back, that decision was a mistake, because our opponents were most certainly not taking that approach.
We were portrayed as the Establishment Party and the party of a government that had not done well during the Covid pandemic. This was played on by Reform Jersey and the likes of Deputy Kirsten Morel and Chief Minister Kristina Moore, with the phrase “Alliance-led government” being pinned on anything from opposition to the “tampon tax” to the “housing crisis”, which conveniently ignored that the leader of Reform Jersey had been Housing Minister for two years.
There was even a comment that if we were to gain an overall majority it would be undemocratic (they need not have worried on that score). It also ignored that many of our candidates were not even in the Assembly; indeed, neither was our leader. Of course, the other factor that became apparent in the coming months (including in an official report) was that former Chief Minister John Le Fondré’s government had actually done pretty well during Covid. But that news perhaps came too late – even if we had been an Alliance government.
It is also true to say that while Alliance leader Sir Mark Boleat stood out to me as an outstanding choice for Chief Minister who had some serious plans for reshaping our government, sadly the Island was not ready for a returning prodigal son – and maybe that typified everything.
The voters we were targeting were not ready to move from the long-established voting patterns they had always enjoyed, unlike Reform’s, who had long moved on and were growing.
Is the Island now ready for an alternative party to Reform Jersey? We shall have to see in the coming months. If it is, then people need to come forward and be a part of a new movement – not just at election time – and really embody their group and contribute to it. Are they ready to do that and are there those around ready to attempt it again, hopefully as one united force? We shall have to see.
What we have now is many people moaning about what they are seeing, but doing nothing to change it.
I had a wonderful chat with someone in the finance industry just after the election.
“Can’t believe Reform did so well…Ridiculous.”
“Did you vote?”
“No mate.”
There’s an old saying: “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.” In my view, we need the superglue – and fast.
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Lindsay Ash was Deputy for St Clement between 2018 and 2022, serving as Assistant Treasury and Home Affairs Minister under Chief Minister John Le Fondré. He worked in the City of London for 15 years as a futures broker before moving to Jersey and working in the Island’s finance industry from 2000. Feedback welcome on Twitter: @Getonthelash2
