YESTERDAY’S 24-21 vote of confidence in deputy chief minister Bernard Flouquet could scarcely have been more slender and it certainly will not satisfy his many critics, who will remain convinced that the formal States reprimand he received was insufficient punishment for a racist joke that not even he could explain why he told.

In particular, the outcome will give ammunition to those who believe that, in the absence of a  ringing endorsement, having nearly 50% of the Assembly declaring that they have no confidence in their deputy chief will leave him holed beneath the waterline and prone to sinking at any time.

Yet the reality is probably that the vote is not so far short of what the island as a whole  believes, albeit the States is possibly more reactionary. In other words, people were divided on the issue and that will remain the case irrespective of yesterday’s decision.

So what is important now is what happens in the aftermath.

The best thing is for everyone – the media included – to move on now that a deeply divisive and unhappy period has been brought to an end by the elected body charged with adjudicating on such things. As some deputies are fond of saying in other circumstances, a democratic decision has been reached.

Yet will those members who ‘lost’ the debate be content to leave it there?

‘That is exactly it,’ one seasoned Frossard House official said yesterday. ‘The in-house bitching is just poisonous…’

One of the features of this Assembly is how much energy some deputies expend in scoring points over each other rather than concentrating on the real corporate issues. One senior Policy Council member has told this newspaper of his doubts that the council will last the full term to 2010. The reason?

The unremitting barrage of criticism from the so-called backbenchers, a phenomena this newspaper has already termed ‘government by 24′, the number of signatures required to dictate policy frequently at odds with the business plan.

There is still time for some good to emerge from l’Affaire Flouquet, however.

All it needs is for members to accept the majority decision and pull together to get the island through turbulent economic times – and control their own expenditure.