From the Summit of the Moral High Ground

For a place like Jersey , the weakness of independent politics is not just fragmentation — it is vulnerability. An isolated States Member can be pressured, managed, delayed, exhausted or quietly neutralised by an entrenched civil service far more easily than a disciplined political party can. Political parties are not merely electoral machines. They are structures of accountability and collective resistance. A lone deputy who challenges the bureaucracy risks being isolated: denied influence, excluded from informal networks, overwhelmed with procedure, outmanoeuvred by institutional continuity, or gradually absorbed into the administrative culture they were elected to scrutinise. But a party changes the balance entirely. A party gives elected representatives: shared policy, shared research, collective discipline, institutional memory, and political consequences for betrayal or drift. Most importantly, parties create loyalty to voters and principles rather than dependenc...

Historical Archive This article is preserved as part of the historical record of this blog. It reflects the author's views at the time of publication. The content has not been substantively altered, although the HTML, accessibility and formatting have been updated to meet modern web standards. Having committed myself to writing one post per day, I had been trawling the Jersey blogs for inspiration. So far I had written posts up until Tuesday, so I hoped my prediction about the next Chief Minister would prove correct. This flowchart just about summed up the election. Swap Republican for Le Gresley, Democrat for Bailhache, Libertarian for Pearce and Green for Forskitt. I came across an older post on Crapaudpinion discussing why Jersey's progressives struggled to work together. My own view was that there were simply too many people who wanted to lead and not enough willingness to compromise. Working together means accepting that things will not always go your...