Fifteen newcomers, one Chief Minister and a quiz team that still cannot name the Treasury Minister, which is devolution in miniature.
RAMSEY, Isle of Man – I have now written the same letter to the Isle of Man Examiner four times, and each draft has been politer than the last, which is how you know you are growing up and how I know I am losing.
Draft one: written before coffee
The first draft began “Sirs,” and went downhill from there. It had three exclamation marks, a reference to the Romans, and a line about the Keys that I will not repeat in a household with a cat. I saved it as “DO NOT SEND” and put it in a folder called “Taxes”, where I keep everything dangerous.
The cause of the fury was a news story I had been reading with my toast. The general election produced a very different House of Keys: ITV reported that fifteen newcomers joined the 24-member chamber and only nine members returned. Two people put themselves forward for Chief Minister. One was Kirrie Jenkins, a first-time MHK who topped the poll in Arbory, Castletown and Malew, and who would have been the island’s first female Chief Minister and the first to hold the post without prior service as an MHK. She said the result showed voters want “a departure from the ‘old ways'”. The other was Chris Thomas, the long-serving Douglas Central MHK and most recently Treasury Minister, who pitched his experience of leading teams and getting things done.
A candidate needed at least 13 of the 24 votes. I did not have one. I had a view, which on this island is the next best thing and costs less.
Draft two: the one with footnotes
By mid-morning I had become reasonable. The second draft quoted both candidates fairly, because I believe in quoting opponents accurately, even when they are other people in my own side’s waiting room. It noted that the voters had plainly wanted change, and that the Keys had then, in the Manx fashion, gone away and thought about it.
Then the answer arrived. Chris Thomas is Chief Minister, and has appointed a Council of Ministers. He also holds the Cabinet Office. Robert Cowell has Enterprise, Sarah Maltby has Education, Sport and Culture, Dr Rachel Glover has Environment, Food and Agriculture, Jason Moorhouse has Infrastructure, Michael Crowe has Treasury, and Claire Christian and Jane Poole-Wilson return to Health and Social Care and Justice and Home Affairs respectively. The other five are new to their roles, and departmental memberships and board appointments are still to come.
The new Chief Minister said: “I am pleased to have formed a team that will work together to get things done”. I have heard that sentence before. In my experience of group chats, it is the sentence that comes just before Dougie leaves the group.
Branch quiz night: a very serious round
Tonight was the branch quiz, held in the function room above a pub whose name I am withholding for the sake of the licensee, since the carpet has suffered enough. Our team is called The Laffer Curves and has not won since the Treasury was last interesting. Brenda read the questions with the gravity of a woman announcing a verdict.
I had prepared a bonus round for the team, which I called “Who Runs What”. It went as follows.
- Which department did Michael Crowe get? Treasury, and Priya had a minor emotional moment.
- Who has Environment, Food and Agriculture? Dr Rachel Glover, which Dougie answered by saying “the cow one”.
- How many of the seven named ministers are new to their roles? Five, and nobody got it, because we are an accounting team and subtraction is hard when you are standing.
The department names deserve a moment. “Environment, Food and Agriculture” has the length and shape of something a committee produced after a long sitting. It reminded me of a headline on farm.fm that I have kept bookmarked for exactly this purpose, about a ranch and farm committee meeting for six months to decide whether it is a ranch or a farm. I would like to see the minutes. I suspect there is a motion to adjourn for lunch.
Post-quiz: the walk home
We came fourth out of five. The team that beat us calls itself Quiz Team Aguilera and no one at our table understands why. A Manx cat was waiting on my wall when I got in. He has no tail, which gives him the dignity of a man who has resigned. He declined an invitation to join the Council of Ministers, on the grounds that nobody has asked him.
I spent the walk thinking about the point my side gets right and my side gets wrong. We are right that governments should spend like people who have to explain it at the school gate. We are wrong when we assume a new face is the same as a new idea. A Chief Minister who has just been Treasury Minister and a House of Keys with fifteen new faces is a recipe I do not yet have a name for. I shall not predict it. I shall merely watch it with a pen.
Final draft: sent
The fourth letter ran to 280 words, quoted every person correctly, and asked one thing: that the new ministers publish what their departments spend on consultants, in plain English, in a table a woman at a quiz can read while holding a pint. That is all. I signed it with my branch role and my postcode, and took a photograph of the envelope because it looked brave.
Sirs, I wish the new Chief Minister and his team every success in getting things done, and would simply ask that the doing be published in a table.
If you want to see how I train my eye for that sort of sentence, I read a checklist for telling a press release from a joke at least once a month, and I file my own bits for The London Prat by the same rule. For the rest of what I get up to, there is London news with the volume turned up, and more of my daily notes at The London Prat if you have the stamina.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/