A week, former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson once said, is a long time in politics.

Certainly, the Progressive Labour Party government must feel the last two weeks have been excessively long.

First, the Bermuda Independence Commission unveiled its report, which the Government hoped at the very least would narrow and frame the debate on Independence. But grievous errors and omissions in the report damaged its credibility almost from the outset, rendering the exercise more or less meaningless.

The following week, having cancelled an earlier meeting with the Bermudians for a Referendum group, Premier Alex Scott finally accepted its petition, but then insulted around one-third of the electorate by saying they did not know what they were signing and got into a rather foolish argument with the organisers on the steps of the Cabinet Office.

On the same day, former Premier Sir John Swan, whose own tenure as Premier ran aground on the rocks of Independence, made a scathing attack on the Government.

Sir John has generally restrained himself in his criticisms of the Government, with the exception of an ill-considered leap into the last election campaign. Since making his speech, Sir John has been criticised, but less for what he had to say than over his own tenure as Premier; perhaps because his criticisms were largely unanswerable. To be sure, some of his language was extreme, but he seemed to put his fingers on the uneasiness that too many Bermuda residents now feel, but too often are afraid to give voice to.

But Sir John's comments were largely accurate. Tourism is a mess, and once again the optimism of spring has been replaced with the depression of autumn. Government's failure to solve the housing crisis is no longer a scandal; it is a simply a reality of life. As Sir John noted, he has personally built two office buildings and one apartment complex since the Berkeley project started ? and it's still not finished.

Not mentioned by Sir John were the challenges to Bermuda's competitiveness. A seminar at a hedge fund conference in Bermuda last week made it clear that Bermuda, which should have scooped up the bulk of this extraordinarily lucrative business, failed to do so, largely because of inflexibility and bureaucratic sluggishness.

At last Thursday's BIC press conference, Mr. Scott announced that the Commission's report would be followed by a Green (discussion) Paper and a White (policy) Paper. He said the Independence debate would not be a "life's work", but it is clear that it could take not months, but years to be completed.

Mr. Scott launched this effort 18 months ago when he, and possibly the idea of Independence itself, were a good deal more popular than they are now. He now gives every impression of trying to spin the debate out until "something turns up" that will change people's minds.

This seems unlikely. And it would be better for the Country if the Government gave up the whole idea of Independence for two reasons.

One would be to focus on the very real problems that Sir John described in his speech. The second reason concerns the very uncertainty that this debate is engendering.

At the very least, this debate was supposed to resolve any uncertainty on this issue. By spinning it out over years, exactly the opposite thing is happening; the uncertainty is only growing.