THE attempt by certain States Members, led by Housing Minister Terry Le Main, to prevent Senator Stuart Syvret from making his Father of the House Christmas speech is hardly the most subtle political move the Island has ever seen.

Moreover, this unskilful manoeuvring has played straight into Senator Syvret’s hands by reinforcing his carefully cultivated image as the man the establishment always wants to gag.

It is, however, easy to appreciate why Senator Le Main and others are eager to prevent a repetition of last year’s embarrassing scene in the States Chamber when Senator Syvret attempted to hijack the traditional goodwill speech to make political points about alleged child abuse. Earnest as the intention behind this might have been, it was a clear and misguided abuse of a time-honoured privilege.

If attempts to thwart a repeat of last year’s fiasco are successful, Senator Syvret has promised to make his speech in the Royal Square instead of in the States Assembly. If he does so, he will speak without the legal protection that he automatically enjoys when speaking from the floor of the House. It is nevertheless likely that he would choose to give vent to the very sort of inflammatory material that other Members fear he intends to deliver in more formal circumstances.

It is clear from his conduct and, in particular, his lack of respect for the traditions of Island politics – which include the understanding that free speech, moderated by the rules of debate, is quite distinct from irresponsible rabble-rousing – that Senator Syvret has no interest in being Father of the House. The question that should therefore have been asked long before anyone thought that it was necessary to try to block any Christmas speech is this: why should he be accorded a title that he does not respect?

The convention is that when the senior Senator offers seasonal good wishes, he does this on behalf of all his Senatorial colleagues. Anyone unwilling or unable to do this should not be afforded the opportunity to reinvent accepted procedure to suit his or her agenda.

Given that in terms of voting and speaking, rights are equal among all our elected representatives, is it not time that Father of the House status were allotted not to the senior Senator, but to the longest-serving Member irrespective of the seat he or she occupies?