On 18 June 2025, there were 82 candidates on the ballot paper in the recent Guernsey Island-wide election.
What went largely unreported though was that there was an additional 83rd person who also participated in this election. A campaign that billed itself as ‘something completely different’ but withdrew before it could make it into the final reckoning.
A character by the name of David Reed, in the role of ‘Deputy Do Nothing’ was going to reduce the number of Deputies by leaving a single seat vacant. We would have had 37 active Deputies and 1 passive anti-Deputy if it had been successful.
Through the ‘Do Nothing’ campaign he sought to take advantage of a likely loophole in Guernsey’s election law (the Reform Law). However, he could not continue on that path and, although he tried to weave his tale to capture the imagination of voters, it all turned to black when that persona encountered the metaphorical octopus.
He met his untimely end on 14 May 2025, devoured whole by that foe, and it’s been a while since he’s written anything. You may recall reading his letter regarding his campaign, published in the Guernsey Press on 20 June 2025, following the election results. However that letter was published posthumously as it was written over Liberation Day weekend, before the events leading to his withdrawal even took place. Since then he has been silent, at peace in the political afterlife.
It would appear to all that that should be the end of the matter. Apparently the campaign had failed to achieve its stated objective and so we have 38 Deputies.
However, now he finds himself awakening, washed ashore, ragged and lifeless after his encounter, not what he was, just a shade of his former self, but still with eyes to see and a voice to speak. The campaign persona has passed from this world, overwhelmed by the octopus, but its spirit lives on. On the other side now, in the fullness of his half-life, he can reflect on what was, now that he has seen both the beginning and the end.
The fact the campaign even occurred has scarcely been acknowledged. It was obscure, it was bizarre, it was absurd.
What was the meaning of it all?
“A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”
For those who followed the campaign from inception in March 2025 on Facebook, where it lived much of its existence, I said at the very start I was not the Deputy Candidate you thought you were looking for. What I meant by that would become clearer down the line, but even then the precise outcome couldn’t be known. There were still many potential paths but I left them all open and now that they have become known I can say more.
You may have read that the loophole on which my campaign had been based has now been closed, the Bailiwick Express were eagle-eyed enough to report that fact when it happened. The proposed amendment to the Reform Law that would have created that loophole was comprehensively rejected by the Assembly on 16 July 2025, within weeks of the new Members entering office. The debate didn’t last very long either!
The ‘Do Nothing’ campaign can never happen again now, and it amounted to nothing. However that’s only true from a certain point of view. The Truth is it did actually manage to achieve several things but no one is going to report on those inconvenient facts and so it falls to me to document them, I shall mention just a few.
At the outset, before even releasing the manifesto, I promised solutions hidden in plain sight, to engage voters. I promised real change. I promised a new perspective on government. The ‘Do Nothing’ campaign, rather than failing to achieve its objectives, has actually achieved exactly what it set out to do in its own Way.
But how? What did the campaign do?
What you initially saw was a candidate aiming to reduce the number of Deputies through an explicit PLEDGE, but it was also something more, something completely different. That was the messaging from the very beginning after all – ‘it’s time now for something completely different’.
The campaign took a terrible TURN however: accusations of dishonesty and that the campaign was breaking the law, civil servants printing off copies of my letters, ready to intervene when I appeared to submit a nomination form. Clearly some had been quite alarmed by the prospect. What followed then? Well, ironically enough, nothing. The silence that followed suggested it never happened at all, some obscure practical joker having his fun, that it had been of no consequence. The evidence, however, would disagree.
The facts of the matter are that, at the point of withdrawal, the implicit point of my campaign had already been demonstrated – it had begun to go viral. I had cast my fishing net into the waters and voters were going to go for it, but it was time to stop. Democracy had been engaged but that was too much for some. There was no need to go any further, I was not motivated by THE PRESTIGE of being elected at all costs.
What, then, was the point?
Well it was this: in malicious hands, this campaign could have had vastly different outcomes, many of them to the detriment of Guernsey. I am not that kind of personality however, I had set this idea in a positive light, but if I had been someone else, there would have been nothing to stop it continuing. Whilst the campaign, as I’d framed it, was absurd, it was not as absurd as proposing to create discrepancies in your own laws without considering all the ramifications.
The swift turnaround in the voting for this ‘loophole proposition’ in the Assembly was notable. It went from only narrowly missing out on the required 2/3rds majority in May 2024 to receiving less than one fifth of the votes a year later when all it needed at the second time of asking was a simple majority.
What happened between those two dates? Well, this campaign happened!
Without officially becoming a Deputy Candidate or making it on to the ballot, with a bare minimum of media coverage, without any public funding or incurring even a single expense, what has this campaign done?
Ultimately, the ‘Do Nothing’ campaign has compelled the States Assembly and Constitution Committee to reject their proposed amendment and close the loophole. It has essentially successfully lobbied to overturn a proposed law change by demonstrating its own ridiculousness. Surely the most successful political candidate in history to never actually even be a candidate!
The campaign was, by its very nature, one of paradox and therefore so is its ultimate outcome.
By promising to do nothing, and indeed doing nothing, my campaign has achieved something.
“The way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight-rope.”
What finally ended the campaign, as articulated by my post-election letter in the Guernsey Press, was the issue of how a person could be willing to serve if they were simultaneously also promising to do nothing. Service does, however, come in many forms.
By running such a campaign that many would consider unfathomable I have demonstrated my willingness to serve, irrespective of the outcomes. The campaign was itself a service. Given it has achieved an outcome, as set out above, how could it not have been a service?
Furthermore, in delivering that service, I have voluntarily complied with the States Member’s Code of Conduct. It states that the primary duty of Members is to act in the public interest and raising awareness of a potential loophole, unorthodox as it may have been, is certainly in the public interest!
In other words, the campaign was not unsuccessful, quite the opposite. It has been a resounding success. If you read my manifesto again together with the promotional materials you will find that the spirit of my campaign manifesto and the core substance of its message remains intact.
In the end I never needed to take the oath to be bound by the Code of Conduct because I have been bound by the Code of Conduct of the Guernsey Way from the beginning. I have served the whole time, and I continue to serve.
Having therefore delivered through my manifesto, I am pleased to declare the final step: the creation of a new position. The position, as set out in my manifesto, of anti-Deputy. I will continue to serve by delivering on the pledge I made in my manifesto. I will continue to do Nothing.
I promise to serve the public interest by continuing to pursue this path and I hope to discover what else might be able to be achieved for the benefit of Guernsey.
We mortals are but shadows and dust, but the dance goes on.
Valar Dohaeris and Best Regards,
(anti-)Deputy Reed
Vale