As the Island heads towards Christmas, it is a time to reflect on the events of the last few weeks, and what they mean for the year to come.
Ministers will be pleased to have got what appeared to be a controversial Budget over the line.
In the end, and if the voting was anything to go by, it really wasn’t that controversial at all, with the Government’s proposals being agreed largely unscathed.
However, regular readers of these columns will remember that the Budget 2026 debate was always likely to be more about setting out the battle lines for the final months of the current term of office, and more importantly (for some) the election which follows it next June.
For example, take this comment from the Chief Minister, Deputy Lyndon Farnham:
“We are spending like a big country, to be honest. We are regulating like a big country, we are centralising like a big country. We are in danger of borrowing like a big country. We are a small island.”
It’s a comment which could – and was, albeit in different words – have been made by someone voting either “pour” or “contre” the Government’s plans for the next three years. On this topic, there is unanimity at either end of the political divide.
Which does really beg the question as to what the true dividing lines in the politics of 2026 are going to be, and who is going to occupy the middle ground?
Presumably some Ministers (or parties) will argue that public spending should increase, as should our borrowing, and our taxes, as public services need more investment, and the money has to come from “somewhere”?
To make that case, they will need to explain how the economy is to be supported, if it is to carry that still heavier burden.
Others – and in seems both the Chief and Treasury Ministers are in this camp – will argue that we are spending too much, saving too little, and our borrowing is at risk of getting too high.
To make that case, they will need to explain how cuts can be made, while investing in our infrastructure, and not diminishing the provision of public services.
That will mean transforming the way they work, as being more important than the actual headcount – in simple terms, doing more with less. They will find solace in the wise words of one today’s JEP columnists:
“True reform shifts focus from the number of people employed, to the value they create. That requires changing behaviours.”
