THERE’S no way for them to spin it, no way to package it, and no way to hide it: the Council of Ministers just got their asses kicked up and down the street.
They can say they were right about GST exemptions on food from the start, that the situation has changed and that it’s not really a U-turn – the same argument, incidentally, that most of them employed when they broke their manifesto commitments to adopt the tax in the first place – but the reality is that they were staring down the barrel of a pretty humiliating defeat.
That’s partly because of the timing of the debate on Deputy Carolyn Labey’s proposition on GST amendments will be just five weeks ahead of the Senatorial elections, and partly because the rising food and fuel prices made GST on food pretty much indefensible.
Given that, they had a choice between backing the exemptions now, or face a likely defeat in September, or a guaranteed defeat in January when the new House sits.
And they did the right thing, although Friday’s U-turn is basically the political equivalent of having your trousers pulled down in front of the whole school.
Are exemptions the best way to protect the low-paid and poor from GST? No.
A properly designed and funded Income Support system – like the one you might expect to have after almost a decade of work – would be the right way to handle it, and the right way to ease the burden on working class families without also ensuring the supply of delicious tax-free lobsters for millionaires.
But that’s not the point.
The point is, that despite the ever-so-tiresome delegate/representative argument, there has to come a point when public feeling is so clear on a subject that politicians won’t ignore it and hope everyone’s mind goes blank by election time.
GST exemptions on food are a great example of that.
Fair enough, all taxes are unpopular – but you’d have to move in some pretty unusual circles or be on some pretty serious drugs to think that there’s any public support for a tax on food.
The States have made some big decisions over the last few years – they elected to give finance companies a 50 per cent tax cut, and let Islanders pick up the tab, to ensure a healthy future for the only industry in Jersey that actually means anything.
And they decided to consign to the waste bin any kind of meaningful cap on population to the same end.
It may well be that they were right to do those things – for what it’s worth I think they probably were on the tax, although I’m not so convinced about the (im)Migration Policy – but they can’t claim to have carried the hearts and minds of the voters with them.
But there are lessons to be learned, and they aren’t easy ones.
The best thing that can come of all this is for Treasury Minister Terry Le Sueur – the heir apparent to the Chief Minister – to think long and hard about what just happened.
The most important is that however much a six-year term insulates politicians from reality, and gives them the impression that they have some kind of God-given entitlement to do whatever they can get away with, they need to take the will and mood of the public as seriously as they take their own ideas on how to serve them.
That’s how you sort out, and here I shudder at the clunkiness of the phrase, the ‘disconnect’ between States Members and voters.
And last week’s U-turn, however desperate and enforced, is a step in the right direction.
But we need more – starting with a renewed focus on capital projects. Because how are Islanders supposed to feel about the States if they see the National Gallery pop up, or the Waterfront development kick off before they see any sign of the increasingly-poorly-named Millennium Town Park?

We’re pretty much in election season now, so we can start expecting Deputies to arouse from their three-year slumber and start lodging propositions, calling public meetings, campaigning for zebra-crossings and developing a new-found interest in planning applications in their districts.
Or maybe not.
When Transport Minister Guy de Faye published plans this week for reduced speed limits around nine primary schools, I have to admit that my first cynical instinct was to check to see how many of the nine were in his district.
The answer? None.
Fair play to him, and shame on me for having such a nasty, suspicious mind.
Staying on a similar theme, there will be some cynical souls out there who read a report about three States Members going to a conference in Malaysia and think it’s all a jolly, a waste of time, and the most questionable use of resources since the Treasury accidentally shredded £2,500.
Not me.
Seen in the right way, from the right angle, and in the right light, it’s a giant step forward. It’s all a matter of seeing the big picture and taking a long-term view.
If it’s possible to send three States Members to Malaysia for a week, then with proper planning and investment, and with the political will, won’t it one day be possible to send all of them, forever?