The next Council of Ministers may have to include an MHK with no previous parliamentary experience.
That’s unless the next Chief Minister ditches now traditional maxim of only choosing cabinet members from the elected chamber.
Although MLCs have been ministers before, but it was clear from the last two administrations, they were not welcome to sit at the CoMin table.
But now there’s a numbers problem because the House of Keys election produced seismic changes in the parliamentary experience demographic.
There are now only nine MHKs with previous experience of life in the Keys. The Council of Ministers in the last administration consisted of the Chief Minister plus eight other ministers.
On top of that, the House of Keys sits this coming Tuesday to choose a new presiding officer from its number. The Speaker is a crucial role in overseeing how democracy works in the debating chamber.
It is hard to imagine that a complete newcomer would be considered.
So that leaves eight MHKs to make up the nine of Comin, if it is to keep the same size as the last administration.
Unless they elect an entirely new member as the Chief Minister, that means the next leader of the government will be faced with picking at least one newcomer or, and this is not impossible, opting to reduce the size of the cabinet.
One option could be to drop the position of Cabinet Office Minister, a role that some former politicians have criticised as creating a barrier between the chief and everyone else, undermining the leaders’ position in the process and weakening the accountability structure.
Or the chief minister may be comfortable appointing two new faces straight into their cabinet. They could be fairly confident of loyalty if they do.
The other option would be to take the recently unfashionable option of turning to the Legislative Council to fill the remaining position(s).
These are matters that any candidate to become the next chief minister will have to consider and will also need to give a clear indication on as part of the selection process for the Isle of Man’s next leader.
The current ministerial positions are Cabinet Office; Education, Sport and Culture; Enterprise; Environment, Food and Agriculture; Health and Social Care; Justice and Home Affairs; Infrastructure; Treasury.
The nine MHKs who were in the previous House of Keys are: David Ashford, Rob Callister, Alfred Cannan, Claire Christian, Joney Faragher, Sarah Maltby, Jason Moorhouse, Jane Poole-Wilson, Chris Thomas.
The new-look House of Keys is due to sit at 2.30pm on Tuesday to elect a new Speaker and Deputy Speaker. The MHKs will also be called on to sign the Standing Orders and the Tynwald Members’ Code of Conduct.