By Bernard Place
IN the late-1990s, Jersey still believed in its own good fortune. Finance was booming, young families could still buy a home and you could get a meal for a tenner during Tennerfest.
It was the era of granite house conversions and long lunches – the Island’s version of the long boom. Looking back, that decade now feels like a different climate, when optimism was simply part of the weather.
The American historian Peter Turchin, in his book End Times, suggests that societies follow a recognisable rhythm: a long build-up of prosperity followed by congestion, with too many elites chasing too few prizes, falling living standards for ordinary people, strained public finances and a gradual loss of trust in political institutions. Eventually, renewal follows – but not before a reckoning. Turchin’s model describes empires and superpowers, but what if we shrink the lens to an island of 100,000 souls that also feels a little stuck?
The “pure” reading: When the system seizes up
Viewed through Turchin’s purist lens, Jersey might look like a pocket-sized version of late-cycle strain.
Elite overproduction comes first. A generation of highly qualified Islanders – lawyers, accountants, project managers and analysts – now compete for a narrower band of senior posts in competition with outsiders.
Ambition exceeds opportunity. In a small system, the glass ceiling can be felt as much as seen. Social media gives everyone a window seat on everyone else’s success.
Next, mass immiseration – an ugly term, but one that catches the disquiet of those who feel they are running fast just to stand still. The well-paid still worry about rent, the young delay families and pensioners fear the next energy bill. A growing share of income disappears into housing, and the Island’s traditional middle feels hollowed out.
Fiscal distress comes dressed in spreadsheets rather than riots. Budgets run over, savings plans slip and public debate turns to who should pay more or wait longer.
We are no longer quite sure what we can afford, or what we truly value.
And then there is political fragmentation. The age of independent pragmatists has given way to new parties and political movements, shifting coalitions and a public losing patience with all of them. Ministers change, reviews multiply and each new Government Plan feels more like a peace treaty than a vision. It is not chaos, but it is not confidence either.
If Turchin’s full model applied, the next stage would be confrontation – institutions hollowed out, legitimacy frayed, public life turning brittle. That is the pure version: neat for a lecture, bleak for an island that still believes itself civil.
The moderated reading: Small systems, quiet strength
A moderated reading, closer to the Jersey in which we live, recognises the same pressures but finds gentler outcomes. Here, the story is not of collapse but of strain contained. Our cycles turn slowly because the community itself still acts as a stabiliser.
Elite competition exists but the surplus of skill often finds a civic outlet, as people chair charities, run parish groups or mentor others. Influence may be dispersed, but so too is goodwill. The instinct to contribute, not just to complain, still runs deep.
Popular unease is real, yet most Islanders channel it through pragmatism rather than protest. Families juggle, neighbours help and the small kindnesses of daily life – a lift offered, a meal cooked for a poorly neighbour, a conversation started – quietly hold the social fabric together.
Those who talk of leaving for more affordable lives elsewhere are sincere, but they are not yet a tide. The evidence for mass departure is thin; what is clearer is a shared worry about what might come next if the balance between work, home and belonging keeps tilting.
Fiscal pressure, too, feels different at this scale. We adjust by trimming ambition rather than tearing up the rulebook.
Capital projects take longer, departments learn to make do. The machinery wheezes but keeps turning, held together by professionalism and a sense of duty. In larger nations, such frictions spark polarisation. In Jersey, they provoke weary jokes and another Scrutiny committee.
And political fragmentation? Perhaps not fragmentation so much as fatigue. Islanders distrust grand schemes but respond well to competence and sincerity. The public mood may be sceptical but, for the most part, it remains civil. We still expect our leaders to succeed, even as we suspect they won’t.
Is there evidence for Turchin’s fifth phase – renewal or reform? Possibly, and quietly. Jersey has a habit of recovering by stealth. Beneath the noise, people are reimagining what good work, sustainable living and social belonging might look like here.
A younger generation of teachers, carers and entrepreneurs are testing new ways of doing things, less showy but more rooted. If renewal is coming, it will arrive softly – not through manifestos, but through practice.
Endings, beginnings and 2026
Turchin reminds us that renewal begins when societies face their structural truths. Jersey’s truths are now in plain sight: housing too dear, politics too brittle, public finances stretched, yet a community still rich in competence and care. That is not an ending; it is a call to attention.
Much is made of an “exodus” of Islanders seeking better lives elsewhere. The stories are poignant, but the numbers still relatively modest. What they express, more than anything, is doubt – a creeping uncertainty about whether the system still works for ordinary people. Rebuilding that confidence, family by family, is the real work of the next political cycle.
The 2026 election will be the first test of our willingness to choose renewal over resignation.
It will ask whether Jersey can make its systems work better and differently, rather than merely louder. We do not need to escape our cycle so much as retune it, rediscovering the small-island virtues of prudence, co-operation and mutual respect that once came naturally.
We are not in our end times, but we may be at the end of our complacency. The tide that rose in the 1990s has receded, the sand now shows the shape of the rock beneath. What we build on that foundation – fairer, leaner and still recognisably ours – will decide whether the next generation sees Jersey as home or history.
A registered nurse for nearly 40 years, Bernard Place has been a clinician, teacher and researcher in intensive care units. From 2012 he managed departments in Jersey’s healthcare system and from 2015 to 2019 was the clinical project director for Jersey’s new hospital.
