Margaret Thatcher

Thatcher took many unpopular decisions, but the Community Charge is the clearest case where unpopularity was a sound verdict. The flat-rate poll tax, introduced in Scotland in 1989 and England and Wales in 1990, charged a duke and a dustman the same, prompted mass non-payment and a riot in Trafalgar Square, and contributed to her removal by her own MPs that November. Its lasting effect was council tax, a property-based replacement still in use, and a lesson about policy designed against all advice.