GUERNSEY’S budget is out and it’s a fairly tame affair, with few radical proposals. The Treasury and Resources minister said he expects that most islanders will find it dull – and he’ll probably be proved right. There are few real rallying points for passionate opposition, although that in itself shows how straitened times have changed our perspective of what is reasonable.

Five years ago, a budget that proposed freezing personal tax allowances and putting up fuel duty by 10% and domestic rates by 20% would have brought howls of protest. In today’s world, most people will be relieved it’s not worse and that the genie of GST has been kept firmly in its bottle.

Of course there will still be grumbles. Petrol prices affect all islanders directly or indirectly and the hike in property rates – while modest in cash terms – will hit elderly people living in former family homes. On the other side of the coin, spending constraint – if it can really be delivered – will inevitably mean the lack of some services that islanders would dearly like to see. However, anybody watching the news coming out of the UK, Ireland or even Jersey will be hard pushed to portray Guernsey’s austerity drive as particularly savage.

In fact, if one wanted to be critical, it’s perhaps the lack of tougher measures to bring the island’s revenue budget back into balance that is the main failing of this budget. It’s true that the predicted raid on the ‘rainy day fund’ is now smaller than first thought, but it still amounts to £45m. between this year and next. On top of this, there’s the relentless depletion of the Capital Reserve to fund essential infrastructure projects. Put together, it’s clear that Guernsey is living well beyond its means.

With only one more (scheduled) budget remaining for this T&R department, it’s perhaps its handling of the infamous black hole on which it will be judged by posterity. Its creation isn’t its fault, with the zero-10 regime being forced on the island by the actions of others and losing the exchequer £100m. a year. The solution was to be a combination of revenue growth and spending constraint.

It’s hard to blame T&R for the lack of growth, given the world recession, although it must take its share of responsibility for runaway expenditure.

But perhaps the most telling factor has been T&R’s response to this perfect storm. It started with big, unaffordable hikes in personal tax allowances, which are now having to be reversed, and there have been few signs of a real determined effort to balance the budget. Of course, the real scale of the problem will depend on the new corporate tax regime, but it’s hard to escape the conclusion that more should have been done sooner to bridge the funding gap.

On a related subject, a couple of weeks ago I predicted an upper-middle-class revolution if the States followed its consultants’ advice and cut the huge grants paid to Guernsey’s private schools. I suggested that most deputies would instantly crumble in the face of an articulate, self-interested lobby group that didn’t fancy paying higher school fees.

Whether those predications prove correct for Guernsey, we’ll have to wait and see, but meanwhile it’s fascinating to see exactly the same debate being played out in Jersey. Sure enough, the predictable arguments about it costing the island more if the colleges close and low-income families making sacrifices to afford a college education have been trotted out on cue and the signs are that most Jersey politicians will give in to such lobbying.

Interestingly, Jersey’s much-vaunted ministerial system of government, which was supposed to facilitate tough decision-making, seems to be no protection against going wobbly. Having set their Education minister James Reed a target of £11m. in savings, several members of Jersey’s ‘cabinet’ have lined up to stab him in the back over a key plank in that difficult strategy. One such Brutus-like intervention even came from Jersey’s Treasury minister Phillip Ouzof, who described the Education Department’s proposals as ‘a bloody mess’.

Full marks to Deputy Reed for showing the courage to press ahead, despite the opposition and possible loss of votes. I only wish we had a few more politicians with such conviction over here. Instead, it seems that as States pay goes up, so job retention becomes the main criterion in deciding how to vote. Of course deputies shouldn’t ignore majority opinion, but must they cave in to every vocal lobby group? With Guernsey’s budget now revealed, it seems that islanders are having an easier time of it than their Jersey and UK counterparts. But would tougher measures have been the wiser decision, asks Peter Roffey