A DRAMATIC, last-minute intervention by the chief minister today might, just might, provide a get-out-of-jail card for States members who are worried about endorsing the Suez incinerator.

Using his regular Guernsey Press column, he has suggested that the States holds off debating the highly-controversial waste disposal strategy until it is known whether Jersey’s States is prepared to accept Guernsey’s refuse in its own incinerator or not.

In many respects, that is the missing piece in the jigsaw. As the chief minister argues opposite, there is growing enthusiasm for the possibility of exporting to Jersey rather than Guernsey spending £93m. on its own energy-from-waste treatment plant.

A delay would provide time to rule the Jersey solution either in or out and islanders will require some very strong proof that such a pause cannot be contemplated.

It may not be the chief minister’s intention, but the outcome of the Jersey debate on accepting our refuse will also be a revealing indication of whether inter-island cooperation can exist in anything other than name only.

Rationally, since that island has accepted the need for a large incinerator with excess capacity, it needs material to burn and it makes no difference whose dustbin it comes from, be that St Ouen’s or St Sampson’s.

So the outcome of the Jersey debate will turn on emotion, caused by similar on-going opposition there to incineration (and any consequential extension of that process) or by general hostility towards Guernsey.

Either way, a request from this island for some neighbourly assistance would have been rejected by gut reaction rather than logic. Jersey struggled to find its own solution to waste, just as Guernsey is. We need a little more time to find ours – is it too much to ask of Jersey that it provides a breathing space for its near neighbour?

Would we do the same for them? Given the right plant and spare capacity, why on earth not? Turning a profit from a fraternal arrangement would appeal to most Guernsey people.

It remains to be seen whether Jersey shares that pragmatism.