THERE’S a lot to be said for a crisis. It concentrates the mind and gets things moving – although not always in the right direction.

So we’re having a budget crisis at the moment (and I promise that’s all I’ll say about that in this column), but we haven’t yet had a constitutional crisis, or at least not for a very long time. So constitutional change is not at the top of the Island’s agenda. Most people are quite happy with the current constitutional arrangement with the UK, just so long as we can continue to make an honest living.

But that could be why a constitutional crisis may be just around the corner. The way we make our living depends a great deal on our international relations and our ability to decide what path we want to take.

The subservient nature of our relationship with the UK could threaten this and cause that crisis. It would be better to be prepared.

This subject was aired at a conference in Jersey last week when many eminent speakers looked at the options open to the Island under the heading ‘Dependency or Sovereignty?’

No firm conclusions were reached and it would have been surprising if anyone had come out and suggested the Channel Islands should gain full sovereignty as quickly as possible and cut the apron strings binding us to the UK. On the other hand, it’s obvious that the current relationship is causing difficulties and that there’s a problem that needs to be addressed.

Clearly something must be done when the expert who has been advising us on EU matters for more than 20 years describes the UK’s representation of the Crown Dependencies as ‘at best indifferent and at worst hostile’.

The same speaker, Alistair Sutton, also called for a review of Protocol Three, which sets out the Island’s relationship with the EU. This is hardly surprising when the protocol is nearly 40 years old and the Island’s economy and interests have changed dramatically in that time. Up to now we’ve been too scared to look at it in detail, let alone change it. Government policy is to let sleeping dogs lie, in the fear that if you disturb them they might bite you.

The UK is unlikely to do that, although some other EU members might be less supportive. However, I’m sure HMG behaves perfectly properly towards the islands and carries out its responsibilities to represent the islands’ interests internationally. Or perhaps not, if Professor Sutton is right.

In any case, it’s difficult to understand how the UK government can fight for the best interests of the islands when (1) they may not be in the interests of the UK, whose citizens elect them, and (2) Jersey’s interests may not coincide with Guernsey’s, or the Isle of Man’s. What happens when the Crown Dependencies differ? Does the UK government fight for the interests of one of the parties it represents, or two, or three or even four?

This may sound unlikely, but it’s perfectly possible that the Channel Islands, who will hopefully stick together, will want to put a different argument to that of the Isle of Man. That might test the ability of even a government able to establish a workable coalition in the UK.

So what are we to do about it?

Well, unlike the budget deficit, we shouldn’t panic (sorry, there goes my promise). But we can’t bury our heads in the sand and so international relations have got to come higher up our list of priorities.

I know the Council of Ministers is flat out cutting the public sector (whoops, again) and doesn’t have much time to worry about constitutional niceties and foreign affairs. However, this is not just of academic interest. It could well impact on the economy and the attractions of the Island as a finance centre.

Those attractions were originally low taxes, and it was thanks to Jersey’s constitution that we were able to set our own tax rates. But another important feature was that Jersey was British, it understood the British rule of law and it was even under the protection of the UK.

Globalisation and the need to find other markets which are not UK-centric means that those attractions are no longer as important as they were. What is still important is certainty, and this isn’t helped by our foreign relations being in the hands of a government we don’t help to elect.

This could come to a head quite soon if the attack on tax havens continues, even if we have a good case for putting ourselves outside that category. Neither the media, political commentators nor even some members of government seem to be able to tell the difference between tax evasion and tax avoidance, as witnessed at the Lib Dems’ annual conference. So we might have to try and make that difference clear.

It could be that the opening of a Channel Islands office in Brussels will ensure that the voice of the islands is heard more clearly than when it’s filtered through the UK government.
However, that assumes that we have something to say. At the moment the policy is merely to react to whatever is thrown at us. We then stand up and fight. But there doesn’t seem to be a policy on how we are to develop what the experts call an ‘international personality’ or what we would like to do with this personality when we’ve got it.

It’s an area of government that is largely ignored in Jersey. Guernsey’s Chief Minister, on the other hand, seems to spend a large part of his time developing contacts and talking to people in Westminster, Brussels and further afield. But then he doesn’t have his own department to run, whereas Jersey’s Chief Minister has, and you can guess what it’s immersed in at the moment.

Perhaps, as has been suggested, we need a foreign minister, and certainly several people I’ve spoken to think that the former Chief Minister would be ideal as a kind of a roving ambassador for Jersey or even the Channel Islands as a whole.

Whatever is the solution for putting our international relations on a firmer footing, we certainly need to be thinking more about it now before that crisis hits us.
Peter Body is editor of Business Brief magazine