le Fondré triumphs in the race for Chief Minister - but how much will really change?

Senator John le Fondré has won a devastating victory over incumbent Chief Minister Ian Gorst in the election for Chief Minister today.

The former Deputy of St. Lawrence (2005-2018) was elected to the Island's highest elected office in a shock result that saw him win with 30 votes to Ian Gorst's mere 19. le Fondré's status as a member that was a traditional opponent of the Chief Minister rather than a former crony (like, say, Terry le Sueur and Frank Walker) prompted Senator Sam Mézec to call le Fondré's election "the end of 70 years of 'Jersey Progressive Party' government" (the JPP was a post-WW2 reactionary party, dominated by businessmen - many of whom were alleged German collaborators - formed in opposition to the socialist Jersey Democratic Movement) - "the first time a head of government has been democratically removed from office and replaced by someone not from the same political gang". Senator Mézec and his Reform Jersey colleagues all backed John le Fondré in the vote for Chief Minister.

While this election has certainly earned its place in Jersey's political history, and Senator le Fondré's elevation is most certainly a political upset in a traditional sense, the question has to be asked - how much change does this really represent? Our new Chief Minister is, after all, a former accountant, having studied Accounting and Finance at university and worked for Ernst and Young, a tax-avoiding gang of busybodies cashing in by helping rob poor people "multinational professional services firm" headquartered in that well-known oasis of transparency, the City of London. His vote.je profile confirms a Reaganite "low, broad and simple" approach to the issue of tax (meanwhile, the low-tax low-spend model continues to be trashed even in business media such as Forbes), while making vague platitudes about "middle Jersey" while making precisely zero mentions of the struggles of working-class, low-income Jersey. le Fondré is best described as what a businessman might call "safe" - a slow-it-all-down, non-radical CM. While his deal with Reform Jersey of veteran socialist Geoff Southern getting an assistant post in Social Security, patron of the arts Monty Tadier as assistant Culture and the chairman himself as Housing Minister and Minister for children shows us that radical politics has most certainly come out of this election as a force to be reckoned with, his promise to appoint The Dictatorphile himself as External Relations Minister (fresh on the tail of yet another ER scandal, this time about Jersey's relationship with Rwanda) sends a clear message that head-chopping dictators are still in and principled diplomacy is still out.

Information about which members voted for which candidate can be found here: https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/jsy/news/new-chief-minister-jersey-john-le-fondre-voted/#.WxV7i-4vyUk