POLITICS being what it is, there will be many undercurrents to this week’s debate on the vote of no confidence in the Public Services Department.

A series of earnest speeches followed by a simple vote of pour or contre rarely does justice to the rumours, manoeuvres, quiet chats, bullying, begging and horse trading that are part and parcel of any such deliberation.

Some deputies, for example, will have their eyes on a seat on PSD, others will be protecting their own seat on a department which might be next in line for the axe.

Some will take a stand on principle alone – and that can swing either way between those who find the vacillations of this minister and his members unacceptable and those who will not vote a department down, no matter what.

Some will be burning with a desire to see waste management move forward under the leadership of men and women untouched by the past, others will accept PSD’s argument that theirs is a huge department with lots of major issues to get on with.

Some, however, will be free of all such baggage.

Instead they will take a pragmatic view that there is only one way to get past this. That way is for a clean start with deputies actively endorsed by their peers.

It is with that final aim in mind that this newspaper would urge deputies to vote.

Throwing out the motion will do nothing other than prolong the public sense that this is a department limping along, untrusted to do vital work and damaged by its past failures.

Such a flawed body – no matter how well it discharges the rest of its mandate – has no hope of uniting in common purpose to solve the waste issue.

Radical measures are the only means with even a slim chance of success. Yet what hope has this department of, firstly, finding the courage to suggest them and, then, taking the public with them?

Suppose, for example, that this version of PSD concludes that a small incinerator really is an essential part as other measures take effect.

Who would accept that now?