HAS Buzzard gone cuckoo?

For today we find the Tory runner in Rossendale and Darwen, Trish Buzzard, praising the poll tax!

Does she not know that it was here in East Lancashire that this most hated tax was killed off - by the Tories' spectacular 1991 by-election defeat in the Ribble Valley?

Or that it toppled another famous poll tax fan - Margaret Thatcher?

And that, on taking over, John Major's first job was to get rid of it?

Heartening as it is to find a candidate who does not parrot the party line - though, just now, you can take your pick of Tory runners rebelling over the government's Euro currency stance - Mrs Buzzard's praise for the poll tax will only have her opponents crowing with delight.

For, in saying that the tax was right in principle and should never have been scrapped but tweaked to make it work, she surely makes a big mistake.

For what political sense is there in digging up a voter-loser in the first place - one that no doubt cost her party the seat she is fighting?

And then, having done so, singing its praises - when events have proved that to the Tories that, if must be talked about at all, it is only by way of apology.

Mrs Buzzard may yet find that, in politics, principle without nous can leave you out on a limb.

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