LET’S recap.

The island has placed responsibility for one of the most important policy areas of recent times in the hands of four men.

Waste – a subject that has provoked 16 States debates, enough U-turns to make a jet pilot dizzy and perhaps the largest demonstration ever to gather outside the Royal Court.

Notwithstanding any nonsense about ‘following States instructions’, those four men can fairly easily be split down the middle between two who favour incineration and two who don’t.

One of the former, the minister, has accepted he cannot be trusted to run the show, so he has placed his deputy in charge.

Before them they have a blank sheet of paper. No instructions whatsoever, just an empty piece of A4 and a vague notion that we should be heading down the path of waste minimisation.

All and sundry are now being invited for ideas to fill that piece of paper. Quickly, before the tip and the common become one.

As is the nature of committee work, there will be compromise. With an even split and no firm mandate it will then come down to who argues hardest.

Even worse, once that sheet of A4 is filled out it will go before the full board for another vote.

And guess who then rides into the picture? The deputy who openly disagrees with everything the States has done on waste since the Suez burner was thrown out last month.

It is the ultimate irony: Deputy Tony Spruce effectively to get the casting vote on waste.

He will do so despite having felt so betrayed by his minister’s anti-burner vote that he resigned; he does so having publicly stated he does not want to be associated with what he knows is a failed policy.

And he does so having put no further work into the matter to help his colleagues while claiming to be part of that department.

A month ago this newspaper called for an en bloc resignation and a fresh start.

It can now be seen that only a vote of no confidence will bring that about and save this process from descending into farce.