CLEARLY - and with a massive Commons majority to give it the nerve - the government is not afraid of grasping nettles.

But even if they are ones that much public opinion says deserve to be grabbed, it still risks being stung by a voter backlash if its radicalism is not more cleverly sold to the country.

For do we not see that today as New Labour's reforming zeal now switches to cutting yet another welfare allowance - this time child benefit - and to forcing people out of their cars?

Common sense and even surveys may agree that these are areas for tough action, but the government's methods may easily make both proposals highly unpopular.

On child benefit, the wrongness of the state giving out £11.05 a week and often much more to families which are already well-off cannot be disputed.

Nor can the government's aim of reforming a welfare system whose future affordability is in doubt so that only the truly needy are helped and self-help becomes the ethic for the remainder.

But when it comes to taking away from people things that they enjoy and consider a "right" - be it a universal benefit or use of their car - then the principle becomes harder to sell.

Consider, for instance, the proposal that Chancellor Gordon Brown might seek to slash the annual £7billion child benefit bill by taxing the payments to better-off families.

Many of them would be the middle-class voters who put Labour in power.

Would not a raid on their wallets run into a wall of protest and turn them back into the Tory fold?

Yet, if it is determined to follow that path, it is perplexing why the government should appear to be giving less of a priority to reducing benefits for these "rich" people and a greater one to slashing those of the "poor" single mothers and disabled. Presentation-wise, it seems to have blundered already.

Similarly, with the proposals for taxing drivers a minimum of £400 a year to use parking spaces at work and to impose levies on parking at supermarkets and out-of-town shopping centres, the government may be addressing the urgent need to reduce traffic pollution and congestion.

But no matter how much support there is for that aim, this move will be resisted because the alternative to car use is unacceptable.

The public transport system is unattractive and inadequate.

That is why motorists, already the Chancellor's milch cow, still stick with their cars and put up with, and contribute to, congestion and pollution.

Another tax will not put them on the buses and trains in droves until they are better than car travel.

Improving public transport should be the government's priority.

But with this tax-them-first outlook, the government is heading only for more voter resentment - and more tests of its nerve on nettle-grasping.

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