Elections Review - Part 2: Coalitions have a bad track record.

The coalition between the Liberal Conservative party and the Progress party failed to make any headway in the election, with only two LCP members elected and only one Progress candidate. Sitting Progress candidate Steve Pallett failed to be elected.

It was a peculiar combination in many ways. Part of the coalition was certainly born of integrity. The UK had shown how when two parties formed an coalition after an election, manifesto promises can be sidelined or discarded in the process. 

Notoriusly, the Liberal Democrat pledge not to raise tuition fees for Universities was reneged on, and had a serious impact on the fortunes of the party at the next election. So the two Jersey parties, looking ahead, decided to join up before an election and provide a joint manifesto rather than one afterwards, with all the horse-trading and problems that might raise. It was an act of integrity, but it made assumptions which were questionable.

The first was the political leanings of the parties. As Sir Philip said after the election - Reform was centre-left and needed a centre-right party to balance it. That was clearly the position of the Liberal Conservatives, but Progress seemed in many ways to be not as far to the left as Reform, but still more to the left of centre than the right. That meant it was a marriage of opposites in some ways, and with a leader (and potential Chief Minister) in Sir Philip Bailhache, the voters who were likely to vote for Progress might well have decided against it. 

That's probably part of the reason why Steve Pallett failed to be re-elected. Steve is a conscientious, hard working member of the States, whose pragmatic approach always was in favour of improve the lot of ordinary people, boosting sporting facilities, and who was very critical of the current government. But he failed to get re-elected, even in his home Parish, and part of the reason must surely be a degree of taint with the coalition with Liberal Conservatives.

Another reason, of course, for Progress having a poor showing in St Brelade was fielding two candidates. Unless you have a very solid core, this will almost certainly split the vote. I gave one of my votes to Steve, but not to Steve Bailly - however, given Mr Bailly's core constituency in St Aubin's and the old St Brelade No 1 district, he probably took votes off Steve Pallett down there. When there are a number of exceptional candidates, you may well (as I did) vote for a solid independent, and vote for a candidate despite being a member of a party or coalition.

There were also a lot of new candidates without perhaps the experience of voting, and they didn't all do badly. David Benn was only 50 votes short of beating Lyndon Farnham. But the successes drew on established already well known candidates. Malcolm Ferey had a high profile from Citizen's Advice and Headway. Sir Philip was well known from a previous election. And Steve Luce had solid support in St Martin (reflected in his taking around 50% of the vote in the combined district)/

Neither party managed to get much momentum either - unlike Reform or Alliance, they had a bare handful of candidates, which could have been another reason for a coalition, to boost their profile. Nevertheless I suspect they would have probably done better had they not joined up.

Is this the end of the road for the coalition? I suspect that Steve Luce will revert to being an independent. Malcolm Ferey already comes across as more of an independent than a party member, so I think it is likely it will fade away, like other parties in the past. The Centre Party sported a number of candidates, including Paul le Clare and Kevin Lewis, but once Kevin was the only one elected, he quickly dropped the party tag. The JDA reduced to Geoff Southern, and vanished as he stood as an independent in the next election.

Also to read:

Elections Review - Part 1: The Alliance Party is Over
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