Public Meeting

‘The Chief Minister should be elected by the People’ 27th October 2014 Presentation notes supplied by MHK

It is with a great deal of trepidation that I accepted the invitation to speak on the unpopular side of this motion. 63% of the thought that the people should elect the Chief Minister directly, and as we know 665 Manx people can’t be entirely wrong. I am going to oppose the direct election of a Chief Minister, but I will recommend some ideas to improve the current system.

It's impossible to have a debate such as this without delving into our constitution, and to some extent our history.

We live in a Constitutional monarchy. The Queen, as Lord of Man is the backstop of our constitutional privileges. She is represented on the Island by the Lt Governor. Under the Council of Ministers Act, the Lt Governor appoints the Chief Minister on the nomination of . The lines of accountability are clear. The head of government is accountable to the head of state and to Tynwald. Tynwald nominated him to office, and under standing orders, only a general election, or Tynwald can remove him from office.

This system is tried and tested in this country and many others. However, the brings with it its own set of complications. The most significant barrier to a directly elected Chief Minister is the absence of a pervasive party system.

Parliaments with a high proportion of independent candidates are rare, in fact in the Commonwealth, the family of nations that share a common parliamentary history, there are few examples. They are all small legislatures: Northwest Territories in Canada, Norfolk Island, Falkland Islands, St Helena, Jersey, and Guernsey.

I am not a fan of political parties. They dilute the accountability between the public and their representative. They are a block vote, policies are driven by the few, and less influenced by the many. Few in this room would be familiar with the outcomes of the executive committees of the or . They impede the voters’ choice of candidate as only those selected by the main parties usually have a chance of getting elected. There are few arguments in its defence, but one of them is a certainty over who the head of government will be – not that you will have had much of a say in that either. You don't have to look very far to realise that this isn't always the case, just look at how Gordon Brown became Prime Minister.

In this model, the party are accountable to their membership (often a fraction of the population). The candidate is accountable, first and foremost, to the party, then his constituents. It is after all the party machine that get them selected, then elected.

Party systems have tended, recent experience notwithstanding, to produce strong governments assured of a majority, and as a result you get party leaders with few restraints on the exercise of their extensive powers. Tony Blair, not parliament, took Britain to war.

Contrast this to the Manx system. Independent members, directly accountable to you, their electorate, for every decision they make. No party screen. Even Ministers have to justify themselves to their electorate for each decision, and stand with their 8 colleagues, or leave Council of Ministers. That clear line of accountability is a real strength.

The lack of party does mean uncertainty for the voter. They don't know what the national direction of travel is when they come to vote for the two candidates for their constituency. I accept this is an inevitable weakness. But a directly elected Chief Minister who doesn’t have the authority to get his programme through Tynwald is worthless. So, you send an MHK who has the power to shape policy. Every member of Tynwald has that influence. Unlike other systems ruled by large majorities, the Manx Government has to be far more sensitive to the mood of Tynwald as it never holds a majority of Tynwald. This is important. It prevents dictatorship, something often forgotten by proponents of a directly elected system. It drives consensus politics. Tynwald must nominate a Chief Minister and Tynwald is supreme, so Tynwald can fire him as well. The balance of power is far finer in our system than in others.

A directly elected Chief Minister diminishes the role of Tynwald, it moves us away from a parliamentary approach to government and more towards a presidential style. This may suit some of the demagogues of the island, but I would suggest that our Government will be poorer because of it. Not least of all because in a broadly split field, the winning candidate may not have much of a mandate, but we can always go back to the joys of the Single Transferrable Vote for an all Island election, we’d probably still get a result by Christmas!

If the power to appoint or nominate the CM comes from the people, then only the people could reverse this: and only then at the polls every few years or by mass public petition. It would be quite untenable for the people to elect someone and for Tynwald to overthrow them. We equally have a problem if a CM is elected that cannot command a parliamentary majority, something that the present system guards against.

Furthermore, cabinet members of presidential systems may be subject to oversight by parliament, but they don’t tend to be members of parliament. In recent times, in response to public criticism, LegCo members have not been appointed to Ministerial posts on the basis that they should be held by people who have a public mandate. It may be that the people need to choose one system or the other.

For many the operations of CoMin are shrouded in mystique, conjuring up images of old men in smoke filled rooms nodding sagely at the utterances of their esteemed leader. The Council of Ministers Act makes the proceedings of Council statutorily confidential, so I have to be careful. But it is a crucible for ideas, a place where Ministers and the Chief Minister are challenged, often vigorously so. It is a scrutiny mechanism within Government, and an important check on the powers of the Chief Minister as Ministers collectively can ultimately stop a course of action by the CM.

There is no system of President’s undergoing question time or other regular, systematic and rigorous scrutiny systems as those that we have to check and scrutinise the use of executive power.

Whichever system you choose, the public has to delegate some of its power. If you keep the present system, you delegate the choice of Chief Minister to your MHK. If you elect them directly, you will not have Ministers with a mandate. This is likely to belie a general mistrust of politicians, but alas that is a function of any representative democracy. In fact the only parliamentary democracy that I know of where direct election was tried was Israel. Introduced in 1996, it fell into the traps I outlined, the popular choice could not command a parliamentary majority – I would suggest that such a coalition would be harder, not easier in a system dominated by Independents.

So, without having a President demagogue, how can the system be improved to make it more transparent, more engaging to the public, without diminishing accountability to Parliament?

John Shimmin, the only Minister to have announced his intention to run as Chief Minister should he be elected felt that he suffered at the polls as a result of being seen to be ‘too big for his boots’, so there is a genuine quandary here.

There is a period of time under the present rules between a General Election and the election of a Chief Minister. In both 2006 and 2011 that period was 12 days1. I see no reason why it couldn’t be extended slightly to allow for a series of public debates over their manifesto, allowing the public to directly question them over it and allow them time to lobby their MHKs and the MLCs over the vote. It is the way that law is done, and for the most part, laws last longer than Chief Ministers. I appreciate the frustration that the public feel in not being able to quiz the Chief Minister, or being able to effectively lobby, as the official candidates are only known

1 In 2011 the Chief Minister was appointed by the Governor on 11th October, following the election of 29 September, a period of 12 days. In 2006, the election was on November 23rd, and the first occasion Tynwald met to decide the issue was 5 December – 12 days.

7 days before the vote at present. This is the easiest thing to change and the one thing that will make the biggest difference.

In conclusion

There are things we can do to improve the system. But I believe that

 Parliamentary democracy is the best answer in the absence of large political parties.  Parliamentary democracy, and a reliance on the confidence of Tynwald makes for a more effective scrutiny regime.  The power to hire and fire should rest with the same person or group, there should not be tensions between the two  Direct election of a CM would place too much power in the hands of one person  In a split field, the directly elected CM would not have much of a mandate without the much beloved STV

BUT

There is scope for the public to be more involved in the debate around the leadership of the Isle of Man for the coming 5 years, and more efforts should be made to encourage that.