By Gavin St Pier
THERE must be an election approaching. Well, there are two actually. One in June 2026 in Jersey and one this June in Guernsey.
The clue is that the calls are growing for systemic political reform. The States Assembly in Jersey has just voted to reinstate the role of Senator in time for that election, having scrapped it ahead of the last election in 2022. This will see nine Senators, directly elected Island-wide, replace one Deputy elected in each of the nine electoral districts.
A former Chief Minister (and Senator) Kristina Moore has also recently lodged a proposition that seeks to agree in principle to the direct election of Jersey’s Chief Minister in an Island-wide election conducted in parallel with a general election. This mirrors an idea put forward a few years earlier by a former Chief Minister in Guernsey, Peter Ferbrache, who suggested it during a debate in Guernsey’s Assembly, as it struggled with the detail of adopting and adapting to an island-wide electoral system. He never pursued the idea further, either before or after securing the role himself by internal election of the Assembly itself.
Meanwhile, in Guernsey, a former Deputy Chief Minister, Mark Helyar, has put forward his own proposals to drain the swamp and take back control from, in his analysis, an out-of-control civil service. This follows the recent publication of a letter in the Guernsey Press from a group of self-proclaimed businessmen. The absence of any businesswomen was noted by some. The letter called for a more executive form of government in Guernsey, moving away from the committee system, without detailing what form that executive might take or how it might work.
All the recent proposals have certain features in common. Firstly, they lack any real granular detail. For example, how does a directly elected, presidential-style Chief Minister mesh into a parliamentary system? What if the rest of the Assembly cannot work with that individual or lose confidence in them? Can the Chief Minister hire and fire their ministers, like a French or American President? Or is it still the Assembly’s job to choose who they want in particular portfolios? In Guernsey’s case, how exactly is it intended that an executive should be scrutinised, checked and held to account?
Secondly, the ideas implicitly assume that the changes will ensure that the “right” sort of people end up in the reformed posts. There is, of course, no guarantee of this. This is very much an example of “be careful what you wish for”.
Thirdly, both islands seem to have their systems of government in near permanent states of review. Jersey has had the Carswell and Clothier reports, long before these latest proposals.
Guernsey has been even more active. It has had the Harwood Panel, which had recommended a system similar to Jersey’s, before it was bent out of shape by multiple amendments on the floor of the Assembly. This bastardised, shrunken committee system with a Chief Minister, ministers and a Policy Council grafted on top, took effect it 2004. It was followed by a backbench-led laundry list of changes, ultimately resulting in a further full review, which further shrunk the size of the States and the number of committees in 2016, while abandoning the titles and trappings of a ministerial system of government.
The current Assembly has managed to spend four years going around in circles and do nothing more than add a committee (for housing), stripping its role and resources out of two existing committees.
All of this activity is driven by politicians intensely frustrated either at the pace of change or their inability to drive policy in the direction they would like – or both. When you stand back from outside the political bubble, you realise how absurd it is that those within it, imagine that changing the number of elected representatives, their titles, the numbers of committees or departments on which they serve or how those who serve are elected is going to make a material difference to the quality or pace of political decision-making in the islands. The phrases that spring to mind are, “fiddling while Rome burns” or “rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic”.
That does not, of course, mean that those pushing hard for reform, do not passionately want to improve the effectiveness of government. Their motives may be unimpeachable, but they are tilting at windmills. It is not the systems of government that make those systems inherently less effective than everyone would wish. It is the lack of common purpose from the people serving in them that is the prime cause. All those individuals may well be serving in good faith and with good intent, but all their different priorities and policy agendas deliver fragmentation of political direction for the government as a whole.
Fourthly, outside niche groups with specialist interests – all the calls and proposals for reform are of almost no interest to the general public at large. The community is not following and, frankly, is not interested in whether there are six, eight or ten Senators and whether they are elected island-wide or in districts. They do not care whether there is or isn’t a committee or a commission or a department for housing. They just want to see government somehow doing something to tackle the housing crisis and are not interested whether that is by a decision of a committee or by ministerial direction.
While all these initiatives may be well-intentioned, those pursuing them need to know that this is what the public regards as pointless navel gazing. It misses what the public really wants: politicians working together to deliver an agreed programme of clear policy that the electorate can understand and to which they can then be held to account for delivery – or not, as the case may be.
Gavin St Pier is a Guernsey politician. He previously served as the President of the island’s Policy and Resources Committee.
