A LEADING lawyer has called on Guernsey to sever its existing ties with the United Kingdom. Ozannes senior partner Roger Perrot no longer trusts local politicians to look after the island’s best interests ‘under the present constitutional arrangements with the United Kingdom’.

Accusing the island’s ‘spineless’ government of too easily succumbing to international pressure, the former States member insists on the need for a written constitution to protect against ‘excessive influence’ from Westminster and the EU.

‘We need to show that, small as we are, we are an independent jurisdiction which has the monarch as our head of state,’ he writes in a special article for the Guernsey Press.

‘I think that the UK as presently governed actually wishes us harm and I see no prospect of that changing.’

The 2002 European savings’ directive and the 1998 Home Office review of laws, systems and practices exemplify how the wills of other governments can be forcibly imposed here, he argues.

Embattled Chief Minister Laurie Morgan is also in the firing line, criticised by Advocate Perrot for a lack of determination to stand up to representatives of British and European governments.

Other ministers are accused of behaving like ‘spoiled children in an unsupervised playground’.

And on the subject of Europe, Advocate Perrot questions why Guernsey should answer to a ‘stinking cesspit of fraud and cronyism’.

His solution is for the island to seek dominion status with a written constitution unsusceptible to manipulation by outsiders.

The Queen would exercise her functions on the advice of Guernsey’s government rather than the Privy Council. Crown officers would no longer be required.

Advocate Perrot also sees it as an opportunity for Guernsey and Jersey to act together, potentially as an island federation.

The idea of independence has been raised by a number of leading figures in the past.

And last April, Jersey’s Bailiff, Sir Philip Bailhache, suggested the islands consider a future together due to increasing threats to fiscal rights and rules.

In December, the States approved the first Government Business Plan, which has the assertion of Guernsey’s independent identity as its number-one priority.

Advocate Perrot believes time is of the essence.

‘I hope that there are those in political life or with a political frame of mind who are of a similar view to mine,’ he writes.

‘If so, it is time for them to do something. Elections are only a year away.’

* Chief Minister Laurie Morgan last year agreed with Lord Falconer, the UK’s Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, that Guernsey would work with the UK on developing its ‘international personality’.

It was said at the time that: ‘The unwritten nature of the relationships allows them to develop in line with progress and world changes.’