Richard Graham looked back at the States Accounts for 2025 debate and wrote that the chamber was very warm. In his account, the Bailiff invited members to remove their outer garments if they wished, and he used that setting to ask why the Assembly’s male deputies are so often described as a scruffy lot.
“It was very warm in the chamber, and the Bailiff promptly invited members to remove their ‘outer garments’ if they wished,” Graham wrote. He added: “I think the current Assembly’s male deputies are a scruffy lot.”
Deputy Meerveld in the chamber
Graham said there was no excuse for members to look as if they had just arrived for a game of darts at the Ship & Crown. He recalled Deputy Meerveld appearing in the chamber in a full-length black leather trench coat, black hat and gloves, a memory he linked to the former Castel deputy not being re-elected in the 2025 general election.
States meetings and dress
The column set the warm debate alongside an earlier winter meeting during the 2016-20 political term, when the Bailiff allowed overcoats and scarves because it was so cold in the chamber. Graham said the presiding officers, law officers, States' Greffier and HM Sheriff all take the trouble to dress appropriately, while asking deputies to learn how to tuck in shirts and wear a tie.
That leaves a narrow but practical point for anyone following the Assembly’s proceedings: the chamber has dress expectations, and those expectations can shift with the temperature and with who is presiding. Graham’s complaint was not aimed at the presiding officers, but at the male deputies he described as poorly turned out, while he did not discuss female standards of dress in the same way.
The criticism stops at appearance, not procedure. The next issue for readers is the one Graham left hanging in plain view: which specific deputies he had in mind when he wrote that the current Assembly’s male deputies are a scruffy lot.
