Clean energy revenue in place of a consumption tax. An island that keeps its young people. An economy with real depth. And the determination to build the consensus to make it happen.
The States of Guernsey is contemplating a consumption tax to close a structural gap in public finances. There is a better answer, one that generates revenue without taxing anyone, frees land for housing, and ends diesel generation in a single act of political will.
Jonathan Wilson on why a consumption tax is the wrong answer, and what Guernsey should do instead.
Our waters carry some of the most powerful tidal flows in the world. That energy can be harvested at commercial scale and converted to electricity revenue, closing the fiscal gap that GST is proposed to fill, without taking a penny from islanders' pockets. The technology exists and is operating. What is missing is the political will to deploy it here.
A tidal programme renders the St Sampson's power station redundant. That diesel-burning facility occupies a significant site that could instead carry the residential development Guernsey genuinely needs. The housing problem and the energy problem share a solution. The people who need those homes already live here.
Tidal energy is consistent, predictable, and carbon-free, following the clock rather than the weather. An island that generates its own clean energy controls its own costs, reduces its emissions, and tells a story about itself to the world that the finance sector alone cannot tell. This is an opportunity, not an obligation.
GST takes money from Guernsey households every time they spend.
Tidal energy puts it back, without taxing anyone at all.
Jonathan Wilson on the families split by an island that has stopped being ambitious.
Young Guernseypeople are leaving, not because they don't love this island, but because a cautious, small-thinking Guernsey cannot hold them. The professional ceiling is low. The housing market rewards incumbents over newcomers. The sense that something ambitious is being built here is largely absent. The result is families maintained across a Gatwick flight, and a slow haemorrhage of the island's most capable people. An ambitious Guernsey keeps its families together. Not out of duty, out of genuine opportunity.
Guernsey's financial services sector is a genuine asset and its reputation is hard-won. But a jurisdiction that depends on a single industry for the majority of its public revenue is structurally exposed. The regulatory pressure on offshore finance from larger jurisdictions is not abating, and navigating that pressure is not the same as building resilience. Resilience requires breadth. Digital intellectual property holding, marine technology, the creative economy, these are not soft additions to a real economy. They are the depth that a serious, forward-looking island builds before it needs to.
Every candidate who has stood for the States of Guernsey in recent memory has produced a manifesto. Most voters could not tell you what a single one of them said. That is not the voters' failure. It is the system's. Without party politics, without collective cabinet responsibility, and without any mechanism to connect a candidate's promises to their subsequent votes, the manifesto becomes a campaign document rather than a commitment. It is produced, distributed, and quietly set aside. Nobody is held to it because nobody is designed to be. An island that cannot hold its politicians to their word cannot make the bold decisions that Guernsey's future requires.
Guernsey's most adventurous international comparison is what Jersey did last. That is a form of intellectual parochialism that costs real money. Gibraltar carved out a serious identity in regulated digital assets. The Isle of Man built genuine depth in fintech and film. Neither had better natural advantages than Guernsey. What they had was the political willingness to look further than the nearest competitor and back something new. Guernsey's horizon need not stop at St Helier.
Jonathan Wilson on why one exceptional industry is not enough, and what an ambitious Guernsey builds next.
I am standing in this election because I care deeply about Guernsey and the kind of community we are building for the future.
My background is in business. I have spent years building and managing companies, which has taught me to focus on outcomes, take responsibility, and deal with problems directly. But my life here is not only about business. I have been fortunate to be involved in the community in different ways, mentoring other business people, coaching youth rugby, and serving as company secretary for a local charity. Those experiences have been genuinely important to me. They remind you that strong communities do not just happen. They are built through time, effort, and people showing up for each other.
I believe Guernsey can be stronger if we invest more in those community bonds, supporting young people, backing local organisations, and making sure we do not lose that sense of connection that makes this island special.
Guernsey faces some significant decisions in the years ahead. I am standing because I want to bring practical experience, a genuine sense of accountability, and a real commitment to this community into those decisions. If we get this right, we can build an island that is not only successful, but connected, resilient, and fair. That is what I am working towards.
Every claim grounded in a real project, a real number, a real international precedent. La Rance has worked since 1966. MeyGen works today. This is not ambition, it is engineering awaiting political will.
Naming things that everyone privately knows but that no candidate has been willing to say out loud, and attaching a credible alternative to each one. Not anger. Clarity.
Housing, energy, the brain drain, economic diversification, these are not separate issues. They are different expressions of the same underlying failure of ambition. They share solutions.
Not asking what Jersey did. Asking what the most successful small jurisdictions in the world did, and whether Guernsey has the courage to do the same.
Anyone who searches my name online will find a public statement issued by the Guernsey Financial Services Commission in 2019, relating to a company I was running. I am setting it out here because voters deserve the full picture, and because I would rather you read my account alongside the official record than encounter one without the other.
The GFSC found serious governance failings at the company between 2013 and 2018. As managing director I carried responsibility for those failings and I accepted that. The company was complex, managing over 1,300 alternative investment funds alongside other regulated activities, and I did not maintain the oversight of our compliance function that the scale of that responsibility required.
That experience pushed me to strengthen my understanding of governance and accountability considerably. I understand the importance of oversight, of proper structures, and of getting the basics right, not as abstract principles but as things I learned the hard way. That understanding shapes directly what I am now proposing for how Guernsey itself should be governed.
But only if we are bold enough to claim them.
Here is what I am asking you to do, and why.