After the election everything will be different. The old guard will be swept away and new thinking and new voices will take the place of the familiar.
And yet, when it comes to it, the result is rarely evidence that the electorate is willing to wipe the floor with the people whose decisions a vocal number have spent the rest of the year decrying. After all, of the six successful candidates, only one, poll-topper Ian Le Marquand, is new to the States and of the five who have been returned to the States only Senator-elect Alan Breckon was strongly anti-GST.
So the great GST backlash did not really happen for either the pro or anti camps. Senator Mike Vibert seems to be the lone ministerial fall guy for the pros and neither Deputy Geoff Southern or newcomer Trevor Pitman made much of a showing for the antis.
A small part of the result can be laid at the door of the fact that it is usually easier to make an impression once your foot is in the political door because people have a context to put you in and have some reference point for whether or not you can achieve something. This may also have been a factor in Mr Le Marquand’s top result. As Magistrate he has had the opportunity to demonstrate his social conscience and intellect.
This week’s results were a vote for safety. The Chief Minister, Frank Walker, has called it a vote for stability but in a sense it is probably more properly a vote partially dictated by the fear of what else we might get rather than a ringing endorsement of what exists.
It may be that many Islanders are anti-GST and want to give a nod to their disapproval of it by supporting Senator-elect Breckon and giving one soon-to-be ex-Minister a bloody nose but, when it comes right down to it, Jersey’s voters have erred on the side of caution.
It is possible that the credit crunch has been a factor in late changes in where people placed their ‘Xs’. There are few people who would wilfully place Jersey’s economy in the hands of people who might be even less trustworthy with the Island wallet than they deem those currently in charge to be.
The current obsession with finance may have pushed back those green credentials we are all so keen to acquire – when it suits us. It does seem harder to care about the environment if you believe that there’s a chance you might fall short on the rent or mortgage, even if this is still a far-away prospect.
What does appear to have been a feature at these elections – and having 21 candidates played a part in this – is that people don’t seem to have felt as informed as they wanted to have been about the candidates.
It is difficult to see how there could have been more information flying about but this was nevertheless a comment made on more than a few occasions.
