Our would-be business or political consultant, requested to make a provocative list of Guernsey’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, offers suggestions for the second component:
- Tiny small-scale taker of exchange rates, interest rates.
- Dependent on imported skills, raw materials and consumer and investment goods.
- A ‘one-crop’ economy dependent on finance sector, with weak second leg (tourism) and no third.
- A high-cost, low productivity economy struggling to secure competitive advantage in narrow fields of activity.
- Opaque lines of accountability within a ‘consensus’ government of individual unaligned deputies lacking knowledge of business and pre-occupied with parochial concerns. No collective responsibility.
- Widespread weakness within civil service/parastatals, especially in cost control – notably in education and health. No sacking for incompetence.
- Insufficient appreciation of the need for predictability and certainty in policy – tax, regulation and migration.
- Expensive place to live – major concern for incomers.
- Finance sector scandals weakly acknowledged.
- Real incomes under pressure. Inequality growing. Pockets of poverty deepening. Squeezed middle evident.
- Banking sector in decline. Wider finance sector employment down, save in compliance. Heavy dependence on lawyers and accountants.
- Big struggle to compete with Jersey, on several fronts.
- House prices under pressure – including in Open Market through missteps in policy.
- Commercial property showing large voids. Over-dependence on construction industry.
- Restrictive population controls. Access to unskilled labour recently but temporarily undermined by changes in housing licence arrangements. Strains emerging in specialist recruitment.
- Dependent on ability to welcome and absorb outsiders – who can nevertheless find it hard to settle.
- Small society = multiple conflicts of interest permitted.
- Serious infrastructural shortfalls – air/sea connections, sewage, roads, public transport. Loss of Heathrow and London City flight connections a negative.
- Narrow tax base (if India can introduce a GST..). Worrying temptation growing to increase existing taxes.
- Poor planning and infrastructural policy architecture.
- Lack of nimbleness, especially regarding new legislation.
- Sub-standard quality statistical data, slowly generated, poorly used.
- Array of mini-cartels among key industries, professions and skilled workforce suggesting wide market failure.
- Slow decision-making, without big picture thinking.
- Dependence on Crown law officers and UK Privy Council for enactment of legislation
- Gap between those ‘in the know’ and broader electorate has grown too large. Rising use of social media is fostering distrust of government, even as voter apathy increases.
- Weak external representation, marketing and PR.
- Isolated island with unreliable weather (especially fog) disrupting external connections.
