In depth: The changing faces of the Manx Treasury

It has been a turbulent week for Manx politics, with the fallout of the chief minister's unexpected reshuffle on Monday morning still being processed by politicians and the wider public.

The removal of the Treasury minister Alex Allinson following a "divergences of policies" with Alfred Cannan was perhaps the most surprising move.

But Cannan said the government had to listen to mounting pressure advising against a 9.9% rise in the minimum wage, and sought to "reset and refresh" in the last eight months of this administration.

Replacing Allinson as Treasury minister is Chris Thomas, no stranger to ministerial work, who pledged to "slow down" the wage rise approved by Tynwald on Tuesday.

But beyond differences over minimum wage rises, how else do the two seasoned politicians differ, and how will it affect the final months of the Cannan administration?

Allinson said the way the reshuffle was handled "was all very sudden and a bit of a shock", adding that "politics can be like that sometimes, it can be brutal".

"But I don't think it has to be, I think there are better ways of handling people when you disagree with them," he said.

"Unfortunately the pressure on government and on politicians has ramped up significantly because we do have an election coming up."

While Thomas, previously a policy and reform minister, as well as infrastructure minister, said he did not want a further ministerial position in this administration, he said government was in a different place now than in 2021.

He said at that time there seemed to be "all sorts of fudges and compromises going round in that search for consensus and it couldn't possibly work because there were people with exactly opposite views".

But since then, he said: "The Island Plan, which I didn't vote for in 2022, has got better and better.

"The real issues like connectivity on and off the island, and housing, have come more and more to the fore.

"I'm happy to join now because I'm more certain that the run up to the election is going to be productive and people will begin to feel better off," he added.

Allinson had been working on the budget, to be delivered in February's sitting of Tynwald in July, which had been signed off before Christmas, he explained.

But with the chief minister pledging to raise the personal rate of income tax allowance "significantly", there are to be some changes to that document.

Allinson said: "We accepted that for a number of years the personal allowance hadn't gone up [which meant people earning more were paying more tax] and that needed to be balanced".

While last year the personal allowance was increased by £250, Allinson said the plan was to do that again this year and look at the "parameters" to see how we could do that "even more".

"I look forward to seeing the budget soon, it'll be interesting to see what tweaks have been made since the one we decided before Christmas," he continued.

With a general election in September, Allinson was hopeful the budget would not pander to a populist agenda.

He said: "I don't think give-away budgets and unfunded tax cuts make sense in the long term, you can't buy the goodwill of people with money."

Being handed the ministerial position just weeks before delivering the Manx budget speech, Thomas said it had been a "tough" few days, which was "even tougher for the people who have been supporting me in the Treasury".

He said it had been "necessary because we've made a political change" to slow the rate of increasing the minimum wage and the pledge to increase the income tax personal allowance.

But he said: "That doesn't mean that every other part of the budget has changed" and Allinson was "all over this budget" as a result of previous months of work.

As a politician "your job is to remember you're a people's representative, you're spending other people's money and you've got to make sure that the public is with you", Thomas continued.

Allinson said he believed the pressure on government and on politicians has ramped up significantly because of the upcoming poll.

And while people were talking about September, they had a "job to do now".

From a "Tynwald viewpoint" he found in recent months "people's focus perhaps was more on the election rather than running the country".

But Thomas said: "We have to recognise there's an election in September, and part of the next nine months is preparing that election.

"I hope to be re-elected in September to be part of the administration that builds on the successes of this government."

While the new Treasury minister had to deliver the Manx budget in a few weeks, he said beyond that "there's quite a lot that's going to happen in the next five or six months".

Work was ongoing "to do with connectivity, to do with pensions, to do with rates, to do with the Liverpool ferry terminal" and more, he said.

"There's so many issues on the agenda and I do hope and I do expect in myself to make a positive contribution," Thomas continued.

"There are great things about our lives here on the island. We've got to increase that optimism and that positivity because that in itself will engender better lives for us because the economy will improve."

Allinson, formerly an enterprise minister and education minister during the coronavirus pandemic, said after six years of ministerial work his diary had "suddenly emptied".

He said he wanted to spend his time now supporting his Tynwald colleagues in bringing through new legislation, and spending more time in Ramsey speaking to his constituents.

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