If you were writing an end of term report on the Quayle regime what would the verdict be?

You would have to acknowledge that it had weathered not one but two storms of historic magnitude, brought on by Brexit and Covid-19.

And that, after some prompting, it had begun the process of addressing climate change.

But you might also notice the elephant in the room of this administration.

The big question largely ignored over the past five years is around the size of government and the sustainability of its spending.

Which is odd, because this issue was high on the political agenda for at least a decade leading up to the last general election.

Yet in 2016 the new government seemed to throw away the diet plan and embark on an era of happy expansion.

The leftward lurch was confusing for a public used to dire warnings about the dangers of an overweight state.

One of the first acts of the incoming administration was to scrap the means testing of free TV licences for the over 75s.

In his debut budget the Treasury Minister announced the first increase in child benefit for seven years and declared that the needs of society would now take precedence over the strictures of the spreadsheet.

The government broke with conventional caution by nationalising the Steam Packet, freely dipping into reserves and taking on substantial loans.

It has maintained the UK’s expensive ’triple lock’ uprating of state pensions despite changes in legislation to allow the island to adopt its own more affordable formula.

The footprint of the public sector has been extended through the construction of ’arm’s length’ quangos in the shape of Manx Care and the Manx Development Corporation.

The number of government employees has grown by more than 400 over the past five years, wiping out the headcount reduction achieved by the previous administration. The total is now 7,700.

There was, of course, the SAVE programme, Treasury’s search for bright ideas to reduce spending by an ambitious £25 million by 2021. Unsurprisingly virtually all the suggestions received proved to be problematic, i.e. they would make politicians unpopular.

SAVE was a naive, or perhaps cunning, experiment in parking responsibility for making cuts outside of the budget process. Like all attempts to create an omelette without breaking eggs it was doomed to failure.

At this point I can hear readers wondering what the problem is, exactly, with all of the above.

Surely it is good thing that this government was socially progressive and abandoned its predecessor’s austere approach to public finances?

Yes, but the new spirit of generosity brings implications for the future. These have not been discussed by Tynwald members, let alone thought through, which indicates that they have been flying blind.

Previous concerns about the size and cost of government were not just based on ideology, or the need to rebalance budgets after the island lost a huge chunk of VAT revenue 10 years ago.

There is the fundamental question of how the Isle of Man can afford a burgeoning welfare state when, as an offshore centre, it has to keep taxes low to attract business.

The competitive constraint on tax rates may be easing, with the prospect of a new global minimum, but this has to remain a strategic consideration.

One pressure that will only intensify is that of the ageing population, which is set to ramp up demand for health and social care in the years ahead.

Sir Jonathan Michael, whose 2019 report led to the creation of Manx Care, warned that even after efficiency savings the annual funding gap for these services would widen to £120 million over the following 15 years.

The options presented by this scenario are all politically difficult:

l restrict access to free health and social care services

l increase taxes

l massively cut spending elsewhere in government

After the forthcoming general election the next House of Keys, if it has any sense of long-term responsibility, will have to start talking about these issues.

Have fun asking your candidates which option they would choose if they became an MHK. You have a right to know.