IF SIR David and Sir Frederick Barclay were looking for a verdict from the people of Sark on their ambitious vision for the future of the island they have had it – an overwhelming rejection of their lavish investment and job creation programme that went hand-in-glove with further reform of Chief Pleas, the tiny community’s government.

The result of the first fully democratic elections there for more than 440 years actually went further than that. Asked not to return 12 particularly anti-Brecqhou conseillers, Sarkees chose metaphorically to stick up two fingers and elected nine of them.

It is an outcome that will delight many in both these Bailiwicks for it sends out a compelling message: Channel Islanders will not be told what to do or how to think by those with money and influence.

That subtext will be all the more powerful in the context of the laying off of so many of the staff employed to carry out Brecqhou’s investment, something that will be seen as a cynical exploitation of ordinary working men and their families by those who failed to get their own way.

As the much-criticised Seneschal put it, the people of Sark would not be bullied. ‘We are a very independent breed. We live and work by our own hand and long may it continue,’ he told the world’s media.

When the rhetoric and triumphalism is stripped away, however, what Sarkees have voted for is the equivalent of Guernsey rejecting the financial services industry and kicked out the only act in town.

From Brecqhou’s point of view, why continue fighting to invest in a community that, as a whole, is opposed to you? Pulling out is the only sensible course in that case.

The real tragedy of course is that the issue became – despite a last-minute olive branch from Brecqhou – a trial of strength, for which both sides have much to answer.

Having proved its point however, Chief Pleas now has a clear mandate – to see whether anything can be salvaged from this for the benefit of the community it has been elected to lead.