It's another working week and there's a new crisis for Gordon Brown and the government. The papers have barely finished picking over the humiliation of last Thursday's disastrous byelection in Crewe and the trouble over the abolition of the 10p tax rate. Now, it is a planned increase in road tax and fuel protests that are drawing angry headlines and sharp editorials against the prime minister.
"ROAD TAX RAGE," says the front page of the usually Labour-loyal Daily Mirror. The Express leads with the impatient instruction: "CUT PETROL DUTY TODAY", and says it is backing today's demonstration by truckers against rising fuel prices.
Blogger David Vance suggests that anger about fuel and road tax is not confined to truckers. "I fully understand the hauliers concerns but I think the solution required is for the government to give us all a break and reduce its utterly extortionate cut of the tax take on every litre of fuel sold in the UK," he writes.
The Telegraph has uncovered figures showing that changes to vehicle excise duty will hit 18 million motorists, when they are introduced next year.
The tax is targeted at environmentally unfriendly cars purchased between 2001 and 2006. It will penalise many families on low incomes, the Telegraph says.
Or, as the Mail puts it: "A host of family cars bought before March 2006 - many used every day for the school run - will see their road tax double from £210 to more than £430."
More than 30 Labour MPs have signed an early day motion calling for the tax to be scrapped, the paper says.
Lots of the papers carry quotes from Rob Marris, a junior member of the government, breaking ranks on the issue. The Guardian says he warned of a repeat of the 10p tax rebellion.
"Just as with the 10p proposals, it is something which is announced in one year's budget and is not to take effect until the following year's budget. It is not about changing future behaviour because these cars already exist in the fleet. There it is retrospective tax... [that will] discredit the concept of green taxes."
The Sun's editorial says much the same thing, only snappier. "Very few of us can afford to sell the faithful family care and buy a shiny new green-friendly model. Yet anyone with three kids or more will be hammered thanks to an ill-judged budget move."
Ominously for Labour, it adds: "British motorists have only one response to a punitive rise in care tax to save the planet. They'll deliver that response at the ballot box."
Former Tory minister John Redwood says Labour will have to think again. "The fuel protests from hauliers and the awakening of Labour MPs to the vehicle excise duty increases, the poll tax of wheels, it is likely the government will come to understand finally that it has driven the motorist into sullen hostility to all this government does and stands for."
This is an edited extract of the Wrap, guardian.co.uk's digest of the day's papers.
