HAVING just taken delivery of a new £130,000 limousine himself, Tony Blair has slammed into reverse his deputy John Prescott's plans for other motorists to go by bus or face a £10-a-day tax to drive in towns.

It is a move that will worry anti-pollution campaigners. But Mr Blair, with his already-sure populist touch, seems to be reacting to something that this newspaper has already sensed - that the more the officially-driven war on the car is waged, the greater becomes the risk of a political backlash.

This proposed tax, he has apparently concluded, is too strong a measure to be forced on motorists yet.

And, despite Mr Prescott's reported fury at the U-turn that rips this so-called congestion charging plan out of the Integrated Transport White Paper he delivers next month, the idea is slowed and side-tracked into plans for extensive localised pilot projects that may not go nationwide until after the next election, if at all.

But Mr Blair needs no drawn-out studies to show that this tax would cost Labour millions of votes.

Yet this is not because of its severity - indeed, there is evidence that it takes quite high charges to stop drivers from clinging to their cars. Nor is it all down to Britain's 30million motorists being among the highest-taxed in Europe already.

Millions of motorists really do need to use their cars. And lacking the alternative of an efficient, available, frequent, cheap and attractive public transport system, they take exception to being punished for using a necessity - as car travel is shown to be even by the government's own surveys pointing to increasing dependence on it. At present, there is no real choice between car-use and public transport. Mr Prescott's plan may have been for councils to fund improvement by handing them the huge revenues from his now-scrapped congestion charges, but that was putting the cart before the horse.

No matter how pressing the pollution and congestion problems, a much-improved integrated transport system needs to be in place the stop-driving coercion commences in order for it to work.

Mr Blair, alert to the political harm in Mr Prescott's radical step, has steered away from trouble by opting for more carrot and less stick in the government's drive to get people to use their cars less.

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