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For Whom This British Tax Tolls : The new prime minister repudiates a Thatcher policy

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It is hard to escape the suspicion that British Prime Minister John Major is not out of the woods yet. No doubt his decision, announced last week, to jettison the hated poll tax will buy him some popularity. That tax had helped end the lengthy and distinguished tenure of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and left the Tory Party with a hefty political yoke to bear in the next national election, where the Labor Party looks to be a formidable competitor.

No doubt the poll tax--each citizen within a given district pays an equal amount regardless of income--had to go. A humiliating special election defeat two weeks ago in Ribble Valley--a seat thought to be one of the Tories’ safest--sent the message to No. 10 Downing St. that unless the tax was withdrawn, Major was risking defeat in the next general election.

But from the standpoint of Conservative Party politics, the challenge for Major was to dump the tax without appearing to repudiate his legendary predecessor or appear an unprincipled Tory. The prime minister moved to slip free from this political noose without seeming too hasty. Taking a “U-turn,” as it is known in British politics, is considered a sign of political weakness. The plan of the government is to search for a new tax alternative while keeping the poll tax in place until 1993.

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A kind of combination tax that is based on property values but that takes into account the number of persons in a household is the leading alternative at the moment. But uncertainty remains. This has enabled members of the Labor Party to have a field day. The Tories’ attempts to find an alternative tax, said Bryan Gould, a Labor spokesman, has become a “long-running farce,” with the government floating ludicrous ideas “ranging from the head tax, the floor tax, the skull tax, the bed and breakfast tax, the capital values tax and the bedroom tax.”

Thatcher introduced the poll tax with a bit of vengeance in mind. The tax was designed to fund the expenditures of local governments that by and large tend to be run by Labor politicians. Thatcher in effect was saying that local spending schemes would no longer be subsidized by the national (i.e. Tory) government in London. But rather than proving a clever sally against the political left, the poll tax backfired and left her own party--and her own preferred successor, John Major--with a political albatross that still hasn’t been disposed of.

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