IT’S been the big story of the summer. He’s young, talented, and adored in his adopted home town. He’s great on his feet, and his occasional creative flourishes inject his chosen arena with magic.

And he’s had, let’s face it, a magnificent year capped by a jaw-dropping victory.
And now . . . he has wavered. Our boy is big time already – no doubt about it – but a move was mooted to the Super Big Time.
And with that move came the promise that he could be the star: the key man who would lead the whole team. Thousands of people would have cheered his every move. He could have inspired his team to greatness.
But he bottled it.
And, with all due respect to Cristiano Ronaldo, that’s pretty much the story of St Helier Constable Simon Crowcroft’s year.
Perhaps ‘bottled it’ is a bit unfair. The official reason is that he didn’t want to try to take on the job because he has a young family and wants to carry on his work for the parish of St Helier.
But it would be easier to have sympathy for him if he hadn’t attached a neat little rider to his announcement stating that he wouldn’t be resigning his Constable’s seat – as he’d promised to do – and standing again to bring his electoral term in line with those of the other Constables and the Senators.
To be honest, the real reason it’s so hard to have much sympathy for Simon Crowcroft is that he has, almost single-handedly, taken almost all the fun out of these elections.
I’ve no idea whether he’d be a better Chief Minister than Terry Le Sueur, but I know he’d do the job differently. And a Council of Ministers with him at the helm would have been a big departure from the Horsfall/Walker line which Senator Le Sueur is likely to continue.
And maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think that Islanders are screaming out for more of the same.
Mr Crowcroft was pretty much a sure thing to top the poll in the Senatorial election, and I reckon that a race between him and Senator Le Sueur for the Chief Minister’s job would have been a close one – close enough almost to guarantee him a position on the Council of Ministers.
For what it’s worth, I still reckon that Senator Le Sueur would have edged it, but that’s not the point.
The point is that there’s no one else out there with a chance of making the thing a contest unless something really wild happens during the elections.
Senator Ben Shenton ruled himself out a long time ago, and although someone calls me up every week and tells me that Economic Development Minister Philip Ozouf is planning to run, I just don’t (a) believe them, or (b) think that he would be any different from Senator Le Sueur.
I don’t see anyone else in the House – and it’s States Members, don’t forget, who elect the Chief Minister, not you – with a realistic prospect of turning the thing into a contest.
And I hope I’m wrong, not because I dislike Senator Le Sueur – although I’d have to admit I’m not crazy about taxing food and milk at a time of unprecedented budgetary surpluses – but rather because I’d like to think that at the heart of the 2008 elections there could be a meaningful debate about policy, such as how much we tax, whether we should control immigration, and where should we be building.
And without a genuine contest for Chief Minister, I don’t see how we can get that.

STILL on the subject of elections, here’s a really easy way to find out whether your candidate (a) wants to represent you, or (b) just wants to be in the States.
If he has stood in the Senatorials, failed, and appeared at the nomination meeting for your district Deputy to try to get back in, then I would humbly suggest that he fits into the second category.
Last time around, four Members successfully pulled off the trick – Deputies Paul Le Claire, Geoff Southern, Guy de Faye and Kevin Lewis – and three other Senatorial candidates tried and failed.
I’m not saying that they weren’t elected fairly, or that they somehow cheated the system. But I’ve sat through more States reform debates, committee hearings and public meetings than I care to remember over the last eight years, with the sum total of progress so far amounting to a few rules on campaign spending limits and shifting the election dates of Constables to a single day.
And it baffles me entirely that Members haven’t moved the nomination meetings to a single night so that candidates could stand for one office each.
Given that there are now rules covering election expenditure, wouldn’t it make sense to cut off the easiest possible way of increasing your spending limit and guaranteeing some free publicity by standing twice?
Of course, had they done so in time for the 2005 polls, we’d be short by one Transport Minister, half the Economic Scrutiny panel and Deputy Le Claire.