FORMER chief minister Mike Torode had some worrying advice for his ex-colleagues while speaking to the Institute of Directors: the honeymoon is over. No, he wasn’t referring to the manual workers’ strike or even the challenge it mounts to the closest Guernsey has had to a pay policy, attempting to keep public expenditure at or below RPI.
Instead, he was speaking about the personality politics that so bedevilled the final 18 months or so of the outgoing House and which helped to convince islanders that not only was government not joined up, elements of it were actively bent on self-destruction.
‘I think the backbiting and nit-picking have already started, which will become more apparent over the next few months,’ he said.
While the new House has got off to a good start - and one that was endorsed by the recent ‘100 days’ seminar held by the IoD and other business groups - the new chief minister and Policy Council have no more weapons in the armoury than their predecessors had to deal with what is predicted to be exactly the same problem.
The real issue is how this administration remains on course or, in Frossard House-speak, continues to behave corporately. One test will be what happens over the future of waste disposal and another will be student loans versus grants.
But perhaps more immediately the challenge is whether States members will be prepared to practise the restraint they and the previous House preached. A number of deputies have already spoken against the 3% offer to manual staff and, while they are fully entitled to express their views, the States’ own negotiating body can hardly find that helpful. Similarly when departments find their own budget under pressure, the lobbying will begin for special cases to be made and extra funds to be ‘found’.
Yet after exhaustive debate, government and the island said that a policy of public sector restraint and private sector growth combined with zero-10 tax changes was the best direction for Guernsey for the next few years.
As that becomes politically more difficult to achieve, so the wish to falter will increase.
In the absence of any power to hold a particular line, what the former chief minister’s prediction means is clear: economic ‘policy’ becomes the lowest common denominator of whatever deputies have the courage to stick to.
Policies by capitulation
FORMER chief minister Mike Torode had some worrying advice for his ex-colleagues while speaking to the Institute of Directors: the honeymoon is over. No, he wasn’t referring to the manual workers’ strike or even the challenge it mounts to the closest Guernsey has had to a pay policy, attempting to keep public expenditure at or below RPI.
Instead, he was speaking about the personality politics that so bedevilled the final 18 months or so of the outgoing House and which helped to convince islanders that not only was government not joined up, elements of it were actively bent on self-destruction.
‘I think the backbiting and nit-picking have already started, which will become more apparent over the next few months,’ he said.
While the new House has got off to a good start - and one that was endorsed by the recent ‘100 days’ seminar held by the IoD and other business groups - the new chief minister and Policy Council have no more weapons in the armoury than their predecessors had to deal with what is predicted to be exactly the same problem.
The real issue is how this administration remains on course or, in Frossard House-speak, continues to behave corporately. One test will be what happens over the future of waste disposal and another will be student loans versus grants.
But perhaps more immediately the challenge is whether States members will be prepared to practise the restraint they and the previous House preached. A number of deputies have already spoken against the 3% offer to manual staff and, while they are fully entitled to express their views, the States’ own negotiating body can hardly find that helpful. Similarly when departments find their own budget under pressure, the lobbying will begin for special cases to be made and extra funds to be ‘found’.
Yet after exhaustive debate, government and the island said that a policy of public sector restraint and private sector growth combined with zero-10 tax changes was the best direction for Guernsey for the next few years.
As that becomes politically more difficult to achieve, so the wish to falter will increase.
In the absence of any power to hold a particular line, what the former chief minister’s prediction means is clear: economic ‘policy’ becomes the lowest common denominator of whatever deputies have the courage to stick to.
Article posted on 23rd July, 2008 - 2.30pm