Timing of reshuffle 'destabilises government'

Sacking two key ministers in the House of Keys has "destabilised government" at a critical time, the former infrastructure minister has said.

Rushen MHK Michelle Haywood was one of two casualties of Alfred Cannan's unexpected ministerial reshuffle on Monday morning.

The Treasury Minister and member for Ramsey, Alex Allinson, was also ousted in the shake-up, made a day before the January sitting of Tynwald.

Haywood said a hurried phone call at 08:00 GMT involved Cannan asking her to step down citing "significant changes with where he wanted to go with policy", and on which there was "no room for manoeuvre".

Former infrastructure minister Tim Crookall is re-joining the department for the third time in this administration, to replace Haywood.

Chris Thomas replaces Alex Allinson in Treasury.

Given the timing of the reshuffle eight months before a general election, Haywood feared that "a lot of really good work that's been done by officers will now just sit on the shelf and it will have to wait until after the next election".

"What the island really needs is just strong and stable government," she said, adding: "With this one move [Cannan's] managed to destabilise government and I think he's destabilised his administration."

Haywood said Cannan had now "made his job really tough" as there was "a very heavy legislative programme to deliver".

"I don't think there'll be very much achieved at all if I'm honest," she added.

"You'd have to be an utter fool to think sacking ministers at this stage is going to make any difference," she added.

One of the main reasons for Haywood's dismissal was the delivery of a region-by-region rollout of 20 mph (32 km/h) zones in urban areas.

But the MHK for Rushen believed Cannan had been influenced by a "noisy bubble on Facebook" that were "not representative of our society".

She said: "There's no voices of the young there, that we know are more at risk in any road traffic accident. There's no voice of the elderly who tend not to be on Facebook."

Haywood added that using social media a "your barometer of what the public want... is a really dangerous strategy".

"Real people in the real world will tell you something very different from what the bots and the multiple account holders do," Haywood said.

She added that the results of "extensive consultations" had all been published and were "out there in the open".

Speaking to the BBC after the reshuffle announcement on Monday, Cannan said government needed to "listen to the criticisms that are coming in".

He added that the changes were made in line with his own ethics and instincts, which he had to follow as the chief minister.

He said: "These are going to be positive changes that will relieve the pressure in terms of the frictions we are seeing and will point to us resolving matters in a more cohesive and collegiate way."

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