An email from Jersey’s chief minister yesterday disclosed some welcome news: the amended Jersey and Isle of Man zero-10 corporation taxation regimes are no longer regarded as harmful by Europe.

For those two islands, the ruling by the EU code of conduct group ends months of uncertainty about the acceptability of their tax packages and, ultimately, whether they would survive at all.

But while the attention has been focused on Guernsey’s fellow Crown Dependencies, the announcement is good for this island, too.

The changes that Jersey has made to its zero-10 solution that have made it acceptable in Brussels brings it into line with the strategy that this island introduced on 1 January 2008. In other words, if Jersey had followed us – Guernsey was first to market with a Channel Islands zero product – much trouble could have been avoided.

Some criticism might be levelled at the States for apparently not having had the ‘bottle’ that Jersey has to stick to its guns and tough it out with Europe’s bureaucrats by being prepared to modify its package to include a presumption of 10% rather than zero.

That would rather miss the point, however. Its government resolution ensured that the local regime was not subject to hostile review and, now that Jersey has modified its tax code to meet the external criticism, it is clear that this island need do nothing.

And just as the presumption has actually cost nothing, but also put Guernsey beyond criticism, it also enabled the Policy Council to quietly prepare a plan B in case it was ever needed.

Taken in the round, this has been a well executed strategy and one for which the Policy Council and its advisers deserve credit.

It is also clear that earlier UK opposition to any offshore tax strategy with zero in it has gone away now that Jersey has come into line with Guernsey and Europe has given its ruling.

So this island’s original plan of introducing zero-10 and funding the resultant black hole deficit from savings, growth and public sector restraint is firmly back on track.

And the part to be played by reduced States spending has never been more important.