THE bad news just keeps on coming. So what’s wrong with Jersey? Even casual visitors are beginning to comment on the gloom and despondency to be found in the island compared even to Guernsey and the Isle of Man, although I admit I haven’t carried out a scientific survey.

However, anecdotally – as they say when they haven’t got any evidence – it would seem that Jersey is very down in the dumps at the moment. Perhaps it’s not surprising because of our financial problems, unemployment, zero-ten and a promise of even more pain to come.

People are also getting fed up with too much traffic and too much building and too much pointless politics (as opposed to useful politics). However, even in the depths of the deepest recession for donkey’s years, the Island has a lot going for it. It just doesn’t seem like it at times.

Part of the problem is a lack of confidence. The public has little confidence in politicians, and politicians have little confidence in public servants and public servants have little confidence in their management, who in turn have little confidence in government, and government doesn’t seem to have confidence in itself.

Of course, even talking about the concept of government in the Jersey context is problematic. Who is the government? It’s certainly not the pretty powerless Council of Ministers, and it’s nonsense to describe 53 independent individuals as a government. So you can’t even blame the government because you can’t identify who the government is.

But it’s even worse than that. We’re not even a country. We can be described as a jurisdiction, a Crown Dependency, a territory or even a peculiar of the Crown, but we are not a sovereign nation. We might like to describe ourselves as independent, but we’re not even that. We may act independently 95% of the time, but we are a dependency of the Crown, which in the 21st century means a dependency of the UK government.

And being a bit dependent is like being a bit pregnant. So who can have confidence in a form of government that’s impossible to describe and where someone else is in charge in any case?

This was graphically brought home in the comments by the UK Ministry of Justice to a select committee report which was critical of the UK’s handling of issues relating to the Crown Dependencies. The ministry was very supportive of the islands in many respects, particularly criticising the handling by the Department of Health of the withdrawal of the reciprocal health agreement. This produced warm words from our leading politicians, with the Chief Minister saying he was pleased that the MOJ ‘clearly recognises the status of the Crown Dependencies as democratic, self-governing communities, responsible for determining our own future’.

Sure, the UK will represent the interests of the islands internationally when they can, but as soon as those interests come into conflict with the interests of the UK, the islands are on their own.

Of course, nobody should expect anything different. The MOJ and all other departments of state are there to serve the interests of the UK electorate who elect them and pay for them. Why should Jersey expect to be treated the same, let alone better, when they don’t elect them and don’t pay for them?

So who can have confidence in a constitutional arrangement where the democratically elected parliament doesn’t have full control over its international relations and a lot else besides? It may be an historical accident that has worked pretty well over the years, but it’s not fit for the 21st century.

Then, of course, there’s the issue of Island laws having to be approved by the Queen in Council, but only after they have been vetted by lawyers in Whitehall. They are now looking at ways of streamlining the process so that as long as the Law Officers in Jersey approve the legislation, it would be rubber-stamped in Whitehall.

Well, not quite. In another example of the Ministry of Justice putting the Crown Dependencies in their place, the ministry ‘wishes to make it clear that changes to this process would not affect the constitutional right of the UK to refuse to recommend for Royal Assent a law which the UK considered should not be so approved’. So what is the poor Queen supposed to do? Does she take notice of her democratically elected government in the UK and refuse to give assent to the law, or does she take notice of her democratically elected government in a Crown Dependency and give her assent?

Tricky one, that, although I think I know the answer. So this is all a bit of a farce, really. Shouldn’t it be the case that if we look like a sovereign state and act like a sovereign state, we are treated as a sovereign state? Constitutional lawyers will no doubt despair at my naivety and tie themselves up in knots trying to argue one side of the case or the other. However, in practical terms it would be a fairly simple process for the Island to sort it out and make sure that our much-cherished independence is put on a firmer footing,

Indeed the Constitution Review Group, which last reported in June 2008, has already made a series of recommendations to ensure that the Island is ready if it is forced to seek independence, although I can’t see that many of the recommendations have been followed up. However, the group concluded that Jersey was ‘equipped to face the challenges of independence’ and that Jersey was in reality ‘already only one or two steps away from sovereignty’.

So perhaps the reason why we haven’t so far taken those steps comes back to the question of confidence.

We seem to prefer being treated as an historical oddity rather than upsetting a comfortable subservience to the UK and deciding our own destiny. Is it any wonder that confidence is in short supply?
Peter Body is editor of
Business Brief magazine