Cannan’s Gamble

A week is a long time in politics and so it has proven, as this piece has been rewritten at least twice since I started it last Monday.

The first rewrite came after Tynwald on Tuesday, the second came after I listened to Phil Gawne’s Perspective programme on Radio Vannin.

The long and short of Phil’s show was that the Chief didn’t want to really get into why he sacked Chris Thomas, other than to make it clear he wanted fast and radical reforms, while Chris Thomas said it was mostly about Crogga.

There are two ways to view what happened, either Alf Cannan has decided he’s going to be more ruthless than even Roman Abromovich was at Chelsea in his pursuit of achieving his goals or he just decided that Mr Thomas was holding things up.

The main problem is that, away from the noise of the political chattering classes on Twitter and Facebook, most people don’t really care about the how or the why, they just want to see things get done. They don’t care that the Chief’s cabinet door is revolving more than a Silverdale’s roundabout, they just want to see things done.

Truth be told, most people I’ve spoken to this week aren’t even that fussed about the environmental arguments around the gas field, they just want to know if it is there and can we exploit it.

During his interview with Phil, Mr Thomas spoke about national assets and ensuring that if there is gas there, it is both managed and extracted in the correct way, whether that involved Crogga or not. He is not wrong about that, but he had, at least to my mind, failed to properly outline that before, which is a shame really as it placed the entire project in a better context.

As to the other big issue facing the Chief this week, there has been grumblings about his inability to maintain the confidence of the Keys.

Mr Cannan has made clear that any incoming DoI Minister will have to agree to what his administration wants to achieve or not bother signing up.  It’s a bold move, with the Chief taking a my way or the highway approach, but speaking to backbenchers, there appears to be little appetite away from the obvious candidates for a mutiny aboard the good ship Tynwald.

As with all of this, if the public can see change happening, they won’t care how it looks right now, but if there isn’t at least perceived improvements in the healthcare, education, the roads, pretty much everything that you can look around and see failings in, then the mood music can change.

As for Crogga and the gas field, I can see it happening, the draw of potential riches must just look too good to turn down right now.