ONE of the unfortunate developments in the controversy over the proposed ‘international identity’ framework document that the States will debate later this month is that the question of who endorses it – the chief minister or the States as a whole – has become something of a trial of strength.

While understandable, for the way this has been reluctantly taken to the States with only an opportunity ‘to note’ the report was clearly going to provoke a challenge, the row detracts from a more fundamental point.

Irrespective of who signs it, the question is: should Guernsey endorse it at all?

This newspaper has consistently expressed concerns about the wording of the document, in particular the statement that the UK would not act internationally on behalf of the island without consultation but without any commitment to obtaining agreement first.

Ministers have objected to that opposition on the grounds that it is too narrow a reading of things and, in any event, the framework makes no changes to the existing constitutional relationship with the Crown and thus the UK.

Yet this framework is specifically about words: the way that the Policy Council’s policy letter uses them to shift emphasis is particularly revealing. More importantly, the framework seeks to define in little more than a page and a half something that has existed and worked for more than 400 years but has never been defined.

So words do matter.

Indeed, it is possible to argue that by accepting ‘consultation’ instead of ‘agreement’ the States would be in breach of its own number one priority in the business plan – upholding and enhancing its domestic autonomy.

Since 1956, international agreements were only to be extended here if the island authorities decided to acquiesce (another specific word) to that. Yet that acknowledgement of acceptance has been dropped from the draft framework and officials from the Ministry of Justice have refused to give ground on conceding anything other than consultation. That is significant.

Islanders and deputies should be aware this is not some esoteric mumbo-jumbo but of fundamental importance to Guernsey’s future.

After all, where was the consultation in the UK Chancellor’s hostile announcement of a long, hard look at the relationship with these islands?