Voting on reinstating the Senators

A vote will take place later this month to reinstate the Senators. But where are the seats going to come from? If it happened, the most likely option is from the ranks of the Deputies.

Potentially, if Deputies seats are reduced, this puts the following last placed at risk:

 
Lyndon Farnham
Montfort Tadier
Andy Howell
Stephen Ahier
Geoff Southern
David Warr
Philip Ozouf Jr
Karen Wilson
Rose Binet

Lyndon Farnham, bringing the proposition, probably doesn't care, and presumably thinks he will do better as a Senator than scraping in last place with 50 votes between him and the two candidates below him.

But I wonder how the others feel? Reform's 10 member party could be depleted by 2 members, and of the others, 3 are Ministers, one is an Assistant Minister.

I think there are two other weaknesses with reverting back to the Senators.

Firstly, the pool of States members for Chief Minister could be depleted. When there were Senators, it was assumed that the Chief Minister would, on an Islandwide mandate, be from their ranks. But that restricts the number of able people to a mere 8 members of the States, while there may be others who are equally if not more able, outside those ranks. But who wants to risk all and - as has happened - crash out of the States? Good men and women have been lost because of that system.

And also the ability of outsiders to jump into the ranks of Senators mean that potentially, those with no local political experience whatsoever, could leapfrog into the States, and in the past that has been a mixed blessing, as some have proven themselves adept as Ministers, others quite frankly would probably not have been Ministers if they had not come high as Senators. 

Do we really want to go back to the situation which has given us two Chief Ministers of no great distinction - Terry Le Sueur, who botched the situation with Bill Ogley, and effectively cost Jersey a huge golden handshake, who also tried to sabotage the setting up of a care inquiry. And yet it was him or Alan Breckon. And when John Le Fondre came to power, it was part of a behind the scenes deal with Reform, who with five votes, nonetheless held balance of power as kingmakers.

And secondly, the Islandwide mandate always has shown a bias away from the more urban areas. Because of the low turnouts in St Helier, especially, the Senators have been weighted against St Helier, and in favour of smaller country Parishes, who can punch above their weight. By having districts with Deputies, although there is a low turnout, there is a more even distribution of seats among the population, so that although turnout may be lower, St Helier is not disadvantaged because of that, and the proportionality allows it to have a number of seats appropriate to its higher level of population.

Finally, let the current system time to bed in before more tampering with it. It was difficult enough getting these changes through - an independent commission was hijacked by Sir Philip Bailhache and proved an abject failure, a number of varied propositions, including one by Lyndon Farnham, have been proposed and failed. And despite being passed, a reargard action was fought after the States vote to block the final implementation. There are sufficient problems of more import than this navel gazing and it's time to put it to bed for a while.