Don’t plan on having a day off work at the next general election, the idea of making it a public holiday has been branded a non-starter.

Policy and Reform Minister Chris Thomas said there were no plans to make the next election day, in September 2021, a national holiday in a bid to boost voter turnout.

Mr Thomas said that, at 10, the Isle of Man already had two more public holidays than the UK.

A broad estimate of the impact on business of another public holiday could be as high as £1 million, the minister suggested.

’It seems to me a non-starter to have an 11th, a third extra holiday than across and the impact on business would be quite brutal,’ he added.

’Surely 10 minutes every five years is not exactly a great burden?’

There had been a brief flurry of excitement that politics could become more interesting - for one day at least - when this week’s House of Keys included a question from Mr Hooper (LibVannin, Ramsey) to Mr Thomas asking, ’whether he has considered making election day a national holiday’.

Thoughts turned to an Indian summer’s day spent on the beach, with a brief sojourn to the local polling station the only interruption for many people -apart from those standing in the election and those running it, presumably.

Mr Thomas said the possibility of a national holiday had been considered in a wider context as part of a review of what could be done to improve general elections, but there were no plans to introduce such a measure.

He admitted there had been no ’specific impact analysis’ on one extra public holiday.

Martyn Perkins (Garff) had a further suggestion to make elections more palatable to voters.

’It might be better to give the general public a week off after the election so they can get used to the idea of who they have actually elected,’ he said.

General elections used to be held in November every five years, but the date was brought forward to the fourth Thursday in September, from 2011, in the hope that longer daylight hours and better weather might increase turnout.

The turnout in the 2016 general election was 52.96.

The turnout in the 2017 UK general election was 68.7%.