The opinions expressed by John Blunt are not necessarily those of this newspaper

TONY Blair would find it hard to demote John Prescott without suffering political damage himself and risking the wrath of his party's still-considerable "Old Labour" element which the bluff deputy premier champions.

But it would seem that, instead, the Prime Minister has begun putting the brake on his second-in-command's madcap transport ideas - lest the car-owning middle-class voters to whom both owe their ministerial Jaguars tell them to get on their bikes.

For, really, the U-turn that Mr Prescott has been made to undertake to convince harassed motorists that the government is not anti-car looks quite spectacular.

But no wonder - when opinion polls show that 80 per cent of people think the bash-the-motorist policy has gone too far already.

So it is that Mr Blair has stopped Mr Prescott's transport ministry from bringing in a blanket reduction of out-of-town main-road speed limits to 50 mph and now his deputy, gleefully slashing droves of congestion and pollution by-pass projects and new road schemes last year, talks of restoring them - paying for them out of the swingeing annually-increasing taxes on petrol that are now also being toned down in response to the motorists' anger. And, furthermore, he tries to cool the wrath over his plans, outlined in the Queen's Speech, for charging motorists to drive in towns and cities, saying it will be at least 2005 before this happens.

But if all of this amounts to rapid back-pedalling on orders from No 10, the intent that lay behind all of this is something that motorists will do well to remember when they are driving to the polling station.

For, indeed, much of the anti-car menace remains despite the purported public turnabout in policy - the ploy being to let councils introduce congestion charges, workplace car park taxes and 50 mph limits all over the place and get the blame for them rather than the government.

The sudden vote-driven spin is that the government really does like motorists after all - when it is still ready to let the eager anti-car cranks in local government persecute them more than ever.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.