You read it here first. For years I’ve been banging on about the advantages of Jersey and Guernsey working much more closely together. Now politicians and industry have taken up the cause.

I’m sure it’s not just my persuasive powers that have made Islanders realise the potential of closer cooperation. To use one of my least favourite phrases – it’s a no-brainer.

Here we are, two small island communities with a similar heritage and history facing an often hostile world. It makes sense to come together to share the challenges, and benefit from the greater clout that our combined efforts will give us. We will still be minnows in international affairs, but nowhere near as vulnerable as we are on our own. That’s the theory at least.

This new enthusiasm for cooperation was demonstrated at a recent debate organised by Lloyds TSB when Jersey’s Chief Minister suggested that one day the islands could become one bailiwick with a joint health service and education system. However he didn’t give any timetable, and so we must conclude that this might happen just before Hell freezes over. It’s certainly not imminent.

Which begs the interesting question as to why, if we can see the advantages at some stage of a common education and health system, that we are not striving for it now? What are we waiting for? It’s never going to get any easier to make radical changes in such essential services.

The answer, unfortunately, is that talking about these opportunities and actually doing something about them are two different things. That’s why as more people become more enthusiastic about cooperation between the islands, I become more pessimistic about it ever happening.

You only have to look at the evidence to see that working closely together in any meaningful way is still a long way off.

Yes we have a joint director of aviation and we’re talking about a joint data protection commissioner. We also share a joint office in Brussels, although it’s difficult to see how it can serve two masters when there is little cooperation between the two islands internationally. For example, Guernsey’s Chief Minister and Jersey’s Treasury Minister both recently had to attend the Liberal Democrats annual conference presumably because they couldn’t trust each other to represent the interests of both islands.

We also have a joint competition regulator, although at present this just means one man doing two jobs. The competition authorities in Jersey and Guernsey remain different structures with different aims, although in time their roles will undoubtedly converge.

There’s also regular contact between various ministries and departments and some joint working, but not a lot to shout about. In an area such as health and safety, for example, the Jersey authorities can call on help from Guernsey in an emergency and vice versa. This is all very sensible and of value, but it’s more a question of neighbours helping each other out, rather than genuine cooperation.
My pessimism, however, stems from the fact that we can’t really expect much more cooperation while we continue to maintain the fiction that Jersey and Guernsey are in competition. Who wants to cooperate with someone who’s trying to take the bread out of your mouth?

I call it a fiction because there is little evidence that Jersey and Guernsey actually compete in the biggest game in town – financial services. Probably for historical reasons, Jersey’s finance sector has developed in a very different way to Guernsey’s, and we both specialise in different things. There is undoubtedly some overlap, but generally speaking what Jersey is good at is not what Guernsey is good at, and vice versa.

Certainly most customers don’t see any competition between the islands. In fact most of them view the two finance industries as one.

Even most people working in the industry also look upon the Channel Islands as one entity, and they will readily co-operate with colleagues in the other island. The recent spate of mergers between Jersey and Guernsey law firms is a case in point.
One such merged firm, Collas Crill, which was launched in April, said that ‘the private sector has already embraced the need to work together and project a pan-Channel Island image to national and global markets’.

However they add the proviso that this has been done ‘while maintaining a competitive individual edge’.

‘It has become increasingly important that we present a united front,’ a group partner says. ’Above all, we need to avoid the re-emergence of old rivalries.’

That, of course, is the other side of the coin. If the islands don’t cooperate, they will tend to do each other down. Some in the finance industry, for example, may be keen to point out the weaknesses in the other island’s offering, just to gain the business. That may not be much of a problem because certainly most of the big institutions have a presence in both islands, but it’s not conducive to closer cooperation.

Earlier this year, Collas Crill organised an event on the subject, and the over-riding conclusion of the panel of financial experts was the need to avoid deriding each other in the London and international markets.

They said that the Channel Islands are often seen as a single pool of service providers although they also said it was healthy for the two islands to be independent jurisdictions and finance sectors.

Personally I don’t see how we can be competing one minute and cooperating the next, and I would have thought that the best approach was to try to present a united front in competition with the rest of the world. After all joining together all the expertise and specialities to be found in Jersey and Guernsey produces a pretty impressive offering.

Unfortunately, the current position is that you have Jersey Finance attended the same overseas events as Guernsey Finance and even exhibiting next to each other because they can’t even share an exhibition stand. When they are not doing that they are going around to various other parts of the world to raise the flag – not the Channel Islands flag, but the Jersey or Guernsey flag. Apart from anything else, it’s a great waste of resources at a time when we are supposed to be working smarter.

Sure the politicians will talk about cooperating with the other island and will even make some minor moves. However they are only looking to save money, which is never a good basis for a long term relationship. Genuine cooperation based upon a shared vision just doesn’t exist, but then to talk about vision and Channel Islands politicians in the same column, shows just how naïve I am.

Peter Body is the editor of Business Brief magazine