IF you tried to pinpoint the moment at which you realised that all this deficit talk was going to end up with a proposal to increase GST, my bet is that it wouldn’t have been Friday’s Budget announcement.

It probably wouldn’t have been the week or two beforehand when whispers about a two per cent rise in the sales tax and some strange tinkering around with social security ceilings started to dribble out of Cyril Le Marquand House – no, it wouldn’t have been then either.

And it probably wouldn’t have been the stage before that, when the Treasury Minister launched a personal tax consultation carrying a range of proposals, including the GST rise, but which gave all of the others a bit of a tough review. Or still the point before that, when it was first announced that the deficit would be filled with a combination of cuts and taxes – or before then, even, when the idea of the structural deficit in public finances was first beginning to form.

No. You’d probably go back further, a lot further, to the point when the States set up the tax in the first place, stipulating that from the point when it came into force in May 2008 that the rate could not be increased for three years.

And that would have been a cracking time to wander down to the bookies, ask for the odds on GST rising the moment that freeze was over, stake everything you had on it, and then quit your job in the sure and certain prospect of a spectacular pay-out in June 2011.

It’s a strange old thing to think about, but it was probably the least surprising Budget in living memory – there’s normally a curveball in there somewhere, whether it’s duty on whisky or income tax thresholds – but there was just nowhere else that this one was ever going to be heading. And that’s not just me talking – one States Member, himself no particular stranger to the angry phone call, reported that as of Monday afternoon he had received precisely no calls, no emails, and no mumblings about the proposed GST hike (he said he had about four calls during the same period on school fees, but that, as they say, is another story).

None of all of this should be taken to say that it’s a great idea or something that’ll be universally popular – just that this is a strange example of a ministerial secret that we’ve all been in on, even from before the start.

And while neither you, me, nor the Council of Ministers should not mistake a lack of surprise for acquiescence on the part of the public it does beg an interesting question – did we know this was going to happen before States Members did?

• Read the full column in Tuesday’s JEP