Today my manifesto site has been published and my campaign is now live. My messaging up to this point has been very unusual and that is because my campaign is something very unusual. I don’t believe it’s something anyone has ever done before, but the Guernsey election rules have given us the opportunity to do just that.

My campaign is a very simple one, and it’s to highlight that there is a loophole in the island-wide voting (IWV) system. It is a loophole that if triggered in the 2025 Guernsey elections would immediately allow us to reduce the Assembly to 37 Guernsey Deputies. 

This loophole will exist because if you take the IWV mechanism together with the proposed amendments to the rules for by-elections you are left with the potential for a very unique situation to arise. That is, if 1 of the 38 Deputies elected through IWV declines to take up their seat immediately following an election, the only way for the vacant seat to be filled is by way of a by-election: it would leave 37 active deputies and 1 vacant seat pending that by-election. 

However, under current proposed amendments to the Reform Law, a by-election would only be triggered by further vacancies, but not if there were only one vacancy! A single vacancy under IWV doesn’t create a democratic deficit nor would it be cost effective to run a by-election for a single vacant seat due to fiscal pressures and so this amendment is very likely going to become law in the next Assembly.

My campaign, therefore, is to promote the existence of this loophole and that it is my intention in standing to test and trigger it by jumping through it and leaving a single seat vacant.

In other words, it is my intention to stand for election as Deputy, but to decline to take up that seat, not take the oath, not take the pay, and we will be left with 37 Deputies in the Assembly. The Deputy salary will be left unspent.

This idea may sound unsettling or unusual at first, but there is much more to it than meets the eye. I have set out some of the rationale in my manifesto but once the initial idea has had a chance to settle, in the weeks that follow I will fill the gaps. Less is more.

This might have the appearance of being a completely maverick manouevre but if there is nothing in the election rules preventing a candidate doing this, and a democratic process ought to allow us to choose from as diverse an array of perspectives as possible, then why shouldn’t this stand in the election booklet and on the ballot paper alongside every other candidate?

Indeed, what better advert for Guernsey as a jurisdiction in that our democratic process allows us to express alternative solutions in ways in which larger jurisdictions could hardly even begin to fathom!

To be clear at the outset, I am a completely independent candidate. I am not affiliated to any political movements, organisations or charters, nor do I intend to be. I have not been financially incentivised to do this. There is just a glaring gap in the IWV system, as I see it, and I have felt it my duty as an islander and in the best interests of the public to highlight this. Therefore I am leaving my comfort zone to give it an appropriate platform in the election, even at personal cost to myself as a private individual, though I have not spent any money on this campaign!

My campaign website is very simple, it consists of only 2 pages. Some people have the ability to talk for hours yet say nothing of substance, you’ll see many examples of that in this election. I have gone the other way with the manifesto because the less you say, the more people seem to remember. It talks not so much as it might, given the magnitude of this idea, but it says everything that needs to be said. Less is more.

Even though the manifesto appears brief, in my spare time I have been developing this campaign for over two years. I have been observing island sentiment and there is an extraordinary level of insight one can gather across the various legacy and social media: The stories that capture the public’s attention, how people respond to those stories in the various comments sections, on Facebook (GPHYS), on Twitter/X and in the Open lines and columnist views in the Guernsey Press and Bailiwick Express.

There is a lot one can discern over time, patterns emerge, tracks repeat. The pieces have all been floating in the air, and so I have drafted this manifesto in an attempt to bring them all together and paint that big picture.

What started as a very simple idea (a Pythonesque idea in all honesty) that I had never considered could be anything of substance has, much to even my own surprise, turned into something else. As I have reflected over time, with different professional and personal thinking hats on, through different perspectives it has taken shape into something completely different. 

What I found was a recurring set of themes, ideas and concerns, but I have kept it simple to capture that spirit in its most fundamental form. The manifesto is the golden thread that remains after much sifting and I have a moral obligation now to deliver this to Guernsey at this time, irrespective of the outcomes.

I’ve written this in a broad way, that I hope you might see your own challenges reflected and understand there is a way forward that each of us can take not just individually, but together in our own ways.

It’s time now for something completely different.

This is the way: Vote David Reed – 2025 Election Manifesto – Less is More

Best Regards,

David Reed

Vale, GY3

(Proposed) 2025 Guernsey Deputy Candidate