THEATRE reviews for newspapers can be funny things – especially when the performance in question is an amateur one.

You want to take into account that they don’t do what they are doing on stage for a living and that they have put in a lot of effort but, at the same time, you need to be fair and acknowledge that they are charging an audience for their attendance.

It seems to be a bit like that with our government at times. You start by wanting to forgive them slightly on the grounds that, for the most part, they are good people doing a hard job, and then you remember that this is our government that we are talking about – the people who are supposed to run our little world. Which, over the last couple of weeks, has seemed rather terrifying. In fact, it has been for some time but has just had an even brighter spotlight trained on it.

Vociferous critics of the Council of Ministers would be forgiven for sitting back at a comfortable distance, folding their arms and just watching slightly smugly as all sorts of unpleasant things hit fans.

After all, when your opponents are doing such a good job of setting up their own noose it probably seems a little excessive to teach them the right knots.

However the current mess over the Waterfront development has arisen – through naivety, ignorance, arrogance, or even a mixture of all of these – what it points to more than anything is an embarrassing appearance of incompetence.

Of course Harcourt, the chosen developers for the project whose financial credentials are now in question, would have painted themselves in the best light possible – they want the job, although they must be reassessing whether it is worth the hassle at the moment.

But the fact is that whether the Las Vegas case is material or just someone trying it on with a Nevada lawsuit, full disclosure on Harcourt’s part and full investigation on WEB’s part would have helped stall the current round of accusations. If the lawsuit isn’t relevant then give evidence about why that is true. Quite apart from that, despite the latest scurryings, someone somewhere is going to have to accept that the buck stops with them. Is that WEB or the ministers?

Senator Stuart Syvret would have it that the Council of Ministers should bear that responsibility, hence his motion of no confidence. And it is very hard to disagree with him.

He said: ‘Whilst these things are difficult to assess accurately, the impression is that a clear majority of people living in Jersey have no confidence in Senator [Frank] Walker and this council.’

No argument there, except I do wonder whether there are two communities in this Island and that Senator Walker et al believe themselves to be serving one of them and consequently are failing to represent the other.
In fact, throughout Senator Syvret’s no confidence motion he hits the nail firmly on the head on any number of issues which trouble a large proportion of the public who care about such things.

Somewhere along the line the words accountability and openness have been skewed. It should not mean telling people what they should hear in order to point them in a certain direction.

It is equally clear that the lessons of the past – the very recent past – are not being learned.

If he was allowed to say such things then the Chief Minister would probably testify that this was his annus horribilis. Every time he has opened his mouth this year words have come out which, with the benefit of hindsight, he probably wishes he could have swallowed.

First there was the car crash of an appearance on Newsnight, then there was the disastrous press conference, both related to the child abuse inquiry at Haut de la Garenne, and then, with the apparent ease of believing himself to be on firm (even if reclaimed) ground the Waterfront development plans open up in an attempt to swallow him whole.

In a strange way there is a sort of inevitability over the latest wave of accusations. The shock of the Haut de la Garenne inquiry and its political fall-out seems to have laid bare faults in our system which, while always present, are now absolutely clear.

It is hard to pin this down to the introduction of ministerial government, since this itself has had its own rather painful teething process, but maybe there is now a transparency that had not actually been intended.

It has now become too hard to believe, however well intentioned we believe some of our ministers to be, that they have to hand all the information that they should have when making huge decisions.

In the past a majority belief in the ‘the system’ and a belief that our chiefs were acting in the public interest may have been enough to carry us through but it is becoming harder and harder to have any faith that this is really the case or that this is just a run of bad publicity. All of this makes it impossible to reject Senator Syvret’s motion of no confidence. As his proposal indicates, this is not merely one failure but rather the tipping point caused by many – although some of the cases outlined by the Senator are disputable.

However, accepting his motion is almost as terrifying as denying it – and not simply because of a fear of change. Moving the ministers out will mean finding new ones and just who among those in the Chamber would replace those being shown the door?