By Gavin St Pier
YOU have a blank sheet of paper and a year-end column to write. Do you look back over the year just gone or do you look forward to the year ahead?
What is gone is gone. What is done is done. But the future is just speculation and guesswork. Perhaps you should do neither and find a neutral, uncontroversial topic in keeping with the holiday mood and season? Or perhaps you do both.
It has been a turbulent year of change in Channel Islands’ politics. A year ago, Peter Ferbrache had just become the first senior political leader of 2024 to be removed in a successful motion of no confidence, and he was replaced by his predecessor but four, Lyndon Trott.
Ferbrache was not alone, soon to be followed by his Jersey counterpart, Kristina Moore, also defenestrated by a similar motion of no confidence in Jersey and soon to be replaced by another Lyndon – this time, Farnham.
Both Lyndons were born in the same year, following the removal of another political leader, JFK, by an assassin’s bullet. He was replaced by Lyndon Johnson, who must have provided the parents of Jersey’s and Guernsey’s chief ministers with the inspiration for their newborns’ name.
Given the common trajectory of these two, surely both the years of their birth, 1964, and 2024 must astrologically be recognised as the “Year of the Lyndon”.
Reform Jersey might shudder with the association, but the Year of the Lyndon must also mark Reform’s coming of age. This was the year that, using their discipline and unity, they established a political party which was in a position to break one chief minister and make another. It was also the year in which they took not one, but three, seats on the Council of Ministers, securing an outsize influence relative to the number of seats they hold in the States Assembly.
As 2024 drew to a close, it saw the departure by resignation of yet another Channel Island political leader, this time in Alderney. Nigel Vooght was elected as a member of the States of Alderney in an uncontested election three years ago, before being elected as Alderney’s most senior politician – chair of the Policy & Finance Committee.
The political neophyte had come with a history of an impeccable business career. But, Icarus-like, he may have flown too close to the sun and was brought crashing to Earth having failed to navigate the toxicity of small community politics, citing political infighting on his way out of the door.
Looking ahead to 2025 will bring further change at the top. In Alderney, Vooght might be replaced by another political newcomer and Alderney homecomer Edward Hill. Having returned to the island after a career took him to the glamour of the Middle East for many years, Hill topped both of the recent Alderney polls, for election to the States of Alderney and then to become one of two Alderney representatives in Guernsey’s States of Deliberation. Hill’s presence is likely to enliven both parliamentary assemblies.
At the opposite end of the political experience stakes, Guernsey will see the departure of Lyndon Trott after 25 years’ political service. Trott is not quite Guernsey’s longest-serving current politician but, having served as Treasury Minister, Deputy Chief Minister and twice as Chief Minister, he is Guernsey’s most experienced and successful political survivor.
He has put it beyond doubt that he will not be standing for re-election in Guernsey’s 18 June general election. Barring the unforeseen and unforeseeable between now and then, Trott will be envied by many political peers everywhere, having achieved what only a tiny fraction of politicians in the world achieves: a departure from the top on his own terms and at a time of his choosing.
Guernsey’s general election will, yet again, provide another opportunity for a reset between the two biggest islands. Whomever is elected, it is an axiom of inter-island politics, that they will – with certainty, hope and maybe even conviction – pledge themselves to closer, more effective working with Jersey. The 2024 joint ferry tender process serves as a reminder, if needed, of how challenging delivery on those sentiments really is. It was a debacle – and it really cannot be whitewashed as anything less – to watch the two islands working in lockstep until a decision was required, when they managed to go in different directions using the same information.
New years are nothing if they are not about hope and optimism of a fresh start. In that spirit, it is important that we do not give up on trying to deliver more effective inter-island policy making.
We all instinctively know that two tiny communities facing a pretty hostile outside world are better off doing so together. The challenges both governments face in managing their public finances are most likely to be the greatest catalyst for change.
The reality ought to be recognised that neither can afford not to work with the other across the piste of public services. From public health to public order, there will be opportunities if there is the political will to lead the change.
However, it requires that political will to exist in equal measure in both islands at the same time, if the politicians stand any chance of directing the public service in the engine room to change their respective ships’ course by even a few degrees.
By the time Guernsey goes to the polls, Jersey will be entering the last 11 months of its administration before its next general election, so the appetite for fresh impetus in inter-island initiatives and co-operation may start waning in the bigger isle. We must all hope that we do not need to wait another 60 years for the next Year of the Lyndon to align the islands’ stars.
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Gavin St Pier is a Guernsey politician. He previously served as the president of the island’s Policy and Resources Committee.
