As the Quayle administration approaches the mid-way point in its term of office it may still seem too early to ask what this government will be remembered for.

Yet whatever happens in the second half of the show, it is unlikely to match the impact of the announcement nine months ago that the Steam Packet was going to be nationalised.

Taking the island’s shipping lifeline into public ownership will surely be the lasting legacy of the current regime.

Only time will tell whether it will be seen as positive or negative.

The concept of ’the People’s Packet’ has popular appeal, however, and it might just prove to be the most practical solution for sea services.

But the process which brought the policy into being was at best highly unusual. At worst it represented a shocking failure of government transparency and parliamentary oversight.

Nationalisation of the ferry company was an historic decision, a radical change of direction which took an inexperienced administration into territory where their predecessors had feared to tread. It involved a colossal amount of taxpayers’ money and carried reputational risk.

You would think, then, that such a proposal would have to be very carefully considered and tested by parliament, in full view of the public, before it could gain approval.

That did not happen, because the policy choice that led to government buying the Steam Packet was never debated in Tynwald.

There can be no scrutiny without visibility. In this case, however, the Council of Ministers and Tynwald disappeared down a rabbit hole together at a critical point in the process. When they came back out again nationalisation had become a fait accompli.

The effective policy position that government eventually arrived at was that public ownership would be better than accepting the company’s offer of an improved harbour user agreement.

That key judgement was never presented, explained or discussed at a sitting of Tynwald. Instead the decision was progressed in two stages, by a route that by-passed the normal requirement for a public policy debate.

First, in July 2017 Tynwald voted overwhelmingly in favour of a surprise recommendation from government to decline the Steam Packet’s offer of enhanced services in return for a renewed monopoly agreement.

It was not made clear why this offer was so unsatisfactory.

Bizarrely, there was virtually no debate on the matter, leading to speculation that ministers and members had privately pre-arranged the item and agreed to say nothing.

If true, the integrity of Tynwald was compromised at this point and it had ceased to function as a critical scrutiny body independent of the executive.

It was not obvious at the time, but the tight-lipped rejection of the company’s offer meant members were embracing the option of public ownership.

The only alternative, allowing the company to continue under the old user agreement, was a political non-starter because of fears it could cut services to a bare minimum.

Out of sight of the people, the people’s representatives had performed a rubber-burning policy U-turn towards nationalisation.

Fast forward to May 2018 and just one week before that month’s sitting of Tynwald the Treasury produced a financial motion for government to buy the Steam Packet. There was no report explaining the new policy behind the motion, just a news release which spoke of ’safeguarding’ sea services.

The threat from which they were to be protected was not specified.

Political and public attention was focused on whether the proposed purchase price was good value for money, as if the principle of public ownership had already been accepted.

And although members were given just a few days to digest the financial details, there was no chance to delay the decision as the company had warned, apparently, that its offer to sell would soon expire.

Tynwald was being railroaded in a manner that would once have been unacceptable, but only one member voted against the motion.

If the public process leading up to nationalisation looked like a bad conjuring trick, what about the internal deliberations? Surely the central policy choice, that public ownership was preferable to the company’s offer, was fully thought through in the Council of Ministers?

Cabinet Office papers released through Freedom of Information offer scant reassurance in this respect. There is little evidence of ministers weighing the pros and cons of the two options or paying much attention to the potential problems of nationalisation.

These latter include external and domestic perceptions of an interventionist and spendthrift regime in the Isle of Man.

But the biggest danger, the one that most deterred previous governments, is that public ownership will require public subsidy as the company’s commercial viability sinks under the weight of political priorities.

At a time when the island is struggling to fund health and social services, the prospect of a further revenue liability is the last thing we need.

The ministerial response to this concern is to keep repeating that the company will be run commercially and profitably at ’arm’s length’ from government. This implies some ingenious mechanism to protect against all political interference, but no such device has yet been revealed.

So it remains unclear whether the ’arm’s length’ reassurance rests on much more than a gentleman’s agreement among the current Tynwald membership. That sounds nice, but in future members might not be gentlemen.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the political process behind the Steam Packet purchase was an example of government by stealth or sleight of hand.

In pushing the deal through as if it were a private sector transaction, rather than an important change in national policy, our politicians showed a disturbing disregard for the principles of democratic decision making.