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Deputy Gavin St Pier gives us his take on last week's debate, which concluded the MONC debacle and saw a new P&R elected to office.
You can read his opinion piece below:
Is there schadenfreude at Deputy Ferbrache’s demise? Absolutely not. At a personal level, I know what it feels like to be leaving office following a vote of the Assembly. It’s painful. You clear the office and the emails stop – dead. It’s like running into a brick wall.
But the decision of the Assembly to support the Motion of No Confidence (MONC) was the right one. The margin in the final vote, 23-16, and the number of votes in favour of the motion was far greater than anyone expected and that too is good thing, as it was emphatic.
After that, the voting pattern became a bit more erratic, again. The whittling down of four candidates (Parkinson, Roffey, Prow and Trott) to two was no great surprise, but the narrowness of the margin of Deputy Trott’s win over Deputy Prow, 21-19, in the final round, was disappointing. Deputy Prow has proved himself to be a hardworking and effective President of the Committee for Home Affairs, but had it not been for the circumstances arising from the MONC, nobody would readily have seen him as a future President of the Policy & Resources Committee (P&R). The fact that he was nominated by the Van Party-led Coalition and received so many votes, was a demonstration that the Assembly did not really want to move on from its previous divisions by strongly endorsing and unifying behind the leading candidate.
Deputy Trott worked exceptionally hard to draw the Assembly together with his nominations to populate the committee, but he really needn’t have bothered. Deputy Ferbrache’s nomination of Deputy Gollop and the Assembly’s support for him, was a wrecking move to spike and spite Deputy Trott. It is beyond question that Deputy Gollop is a decent, honest, very hard working and long-standing States’ member, who has contributed much over many years and continues to do so. His indecision and flip-flopping frustrates everyone but he is liked by all and offends no-one. He would not have seen his nomination in a negative light – or wanted it to be seen in that way – but 25 years of prior Assemblies have judged it more appropriate and in his own best interests to give him less senior roles.
The New P&R that emerged, included two members from Old P&R, in whom the Assembly had literally only just voted to say it had no confidence, and three out of the five had supported GST, the loss of which (for the third time) was the trigger for the MONC.
Despite its bizarre birthing, New P&R will be an improvement on Old P&R, which had spent three years, perhaps unintentionally, talking the Assembly and community into a slough of despair. Having emerged from the pandemic in such a positive, upbeat, Guernsey Together frame of mind, the community suddenly found itself subject to relentless, downbeat negativity. The language of austerity became the daily diet and as a justification for the inability to achieve or do anything. Old P&R would probably say they were just being realistic but good communication is key to being in government. Old P&R either did not know that or did not care. Either way, they made no effort. Consequently, confidence in and outside the Assembly leached away. And confidence in government is a key ingredient for the community and business to themselves feel confident enough to decide to make long-term investment in the island.
New P&R only has 18 months left until the General Election in June 2025, which is too little time for them to be as effective as they might wish, but merely replacing Eeyore with Tigger will make a big difference.
Despite losing his bids to be both President of and a member of P&R, Deputy Parkinson is the long-term winner of the week. He’s been in the States since 2004, with a short break during the 2012-16 term. This has included a stint as Treasury & Resources Minister from 2008-12. Despite this experience, his obvious intellect and talent, he’s found himself denied a senior role during this term. But if he leaves the Assembly at the end of this term having contributed little else, he will still go down in the history books as being the man brave enough to call for the MONC back in February, after the second GST defeat, when everyone else knew it was needed and then followed through in November. As a result, for the first time ever, the island’s most senior politician and committee have been removed by a MONC.
The loser of the week was Deputy Kazantseva-Miller. Deputy K-M has demonstrated in recent weeks that she is this Assembly’s eternal optimist, always hoping that things will be better than they are. It is an admirable quality and in consequence she has found herself valiantly leading the charge to bring the Assembly together. It’s been a courageous and lonely effort. This may explain why she was the only member to abstain on the MONC. But like the Liberal Democrats in the UK, she found herself squeezed in the middle by both sides and consequently, to everyone’s surprise, she found herself with the least votes in the election to join New P&R. Fortunately, her relentless optimism will ensure that she bounces back quickly.
As for Deputy Ferbrache? Well, he and I are now both in the same boat, with more time on our hands than we would wish. We are planning to get together over a coffee and mince pie. No doubt we will share anecdotes on the experience of losing a job we both enjoyed, but we will also talk about what we may be able to work on together during the remainder of this term. Thank goodness the so-called St.Pier-Febrache psychodrama (or is it the other way around?), which was a lazy narrative that suited others more than reflecting reality, is finally over.
