Britain A Victory of Major Proportions

By Guy Garcia

It must have been a bittersweet moment for Margaret Thatcher. Minutes after Britain's Conservative Party announced that it had chosen her next-door neighbor, Chancellor of the Exchequer John Major, to succeed her, the ousted Prime Minister dashed through the connecting door between No. 10 and No. 11 Downing Street to congratulate him. At 47, Major had just become the youngest man to assume the venerable office since 1894. As a smiling Thatcher watched from a second-floor window of the Chancellor's official residence, Major emerged to face the press and pay tribute to his political mentor, calling her "one of the most remarkable leaders the Conservative Party has ever had."

Thatcher said she was "delighted and thrilled" by Major's succession, adding, "He will be a superb leader of this country." She had good reason for ebullience. Forced out of office by her own party the week before, Thatcher saw her protege chosen as Prime Minister, ensuring that the basic tenets of Thatcherism would continue to set the national agenda even after she stepped down.

Major's victory was also a decisive setback for the political fortunes of Michael Heseltine, the former Defense Minister who led the charge against Thatcher and was considered the top contender for her job after he won 152 votes in the first round of a party-leadership contest two weeks ago. Warned that she would lose the second ballot against Heseltine, Thatcher resigned to allow Major and Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd to enter the race.

The logic of putting both men on the ballot was based on the assumption that Hurd, a Tory moderate, and Major, a loyal Thatcherite, could together siphon off more votes from Heseltine than either man alone. By early last week the momentum began to swing to Major, who appealed to younger M.P.s, hard-core Thatcherites, many moderates and right-wingers who considered Heseltine a traitor for precipitating the worst party crisis in 15 years. Also working against Heseltine was the fact that some M.P.s considered the millionaire publisher too flamboyant to be Prime Minister.

At the same time, Major, who never attended a university, benefited from his image as a man of the people who had overcome his humble origins by dint of hard work and talent. Soft-spoken and calm, Major offered Tories a perfect compromise -- a continuation of Thatcher's basic policies without the drawbacks of her grating style.

When Tuesday's vote closed at 6 p.m., the M.P.s gathered in the House of Commons' lobby and awaited the result: Major got 185 votes, Heseltine 131, Hurd 56. As it became clear that Major had missed a majority by only two votes, a large groan of frustration rose up. The prospect of a third ballot was too much to bear after the tension-filled days of the previous three weeks.

Shortly after the results were tallied, however, Heseltine announced that he was conceding victory to Major. Minutes later, Hurd appeared on the steps of the Foreign Office and vowed to support Major. With no one left to challenge the front runner, the party's chieftains concluded that a third round was unnecessary, and Major was declared the winner.

Standing in front of 10 Downing Street, Major said he wanted to "build a society of opportunity," adding, "By that I mean an open society, a society in which what people fulfill will depend upon their talent, their application and their good fortune." Issuing his own call for Tory unity, Major insisted that "there is no ill feeling at the end of this contest for the leadership of the Conservative Party."

Major backed his words with action by including both Hurd and Heseltine in his Cabinet. Hurd kept his job as Foreign Secretary, while Heseltine was appointed Environment Secretary. Ironically, Heseltine's biggest task in his new job will be to reform the unpopular poll tax that contributed to Thatcher's downfall. In his campaign to unseat the Prime Minister, Heseltine said he would tie the tax to individual incomes rather than assessing a flat rate.

But it remains to be seen if Major is equally skillful when it comes to guiding Britain's economic integration with the European Community. He opposes the imposition of a single European currency and a series of deadlines that the other Community members favor. He also rejects a European federation under one supranational government. Major's talents as a statesman and negotiator will be put to the test next month at the 12-member E.C. summit in Rome, where his plan for a permanent 13th currency that would parallel, but not abolish, the national currencies will be debated.

On the domestic front, Major, who has described himself as an economic conservative and a social liberal, indicated he will adhere to a tight economic policy. Polls taken in the wake of the vote showed that if a general election were held now, the Tories would comfortably beat Labour 49% to 38%. But once the novelty of change subsides, Major will be under increasing pressure to ease Britain's 14% interest rate. He must also find a way to reform the unpopular poll tax and slay the twin monsters of rising unemployment and inflation in time for the next general election, which must be called by June 1992.

Major's victory presents the opposition with considerable electoral problems, if only because he is not the convenient target that Thatcher had become. "Labour is significantly and adversely affected," said Liberal Party leader Paddy Ashdown. "Now that Mrs. Thatcher is gone, their fox is shot."

Rattled by their party's bleak prospects, some Labourites have begun muttering that perhaps leader Neil Kinnock should be dumped before the next election. His likely replacement would be shadow chancellor of the exchequer John Smith, a canny Scot whom the Tories regard as a formidable opponent. Predictably, the Labour leadership has sought to downplay the damage. Calling Major "little more than Mrs. Thatcher in a suit," Kinnock said his victory meant "that the policies that brought poll tax, recession, heavy mortgages and rising unemployment will go on."

The charge was echoed by deputy Labour leader Roy Hattersley, who claimed that Heseltine, being a Thatcher outsider, would have been a more formidable opponent than Major. "He would have got rid of the poll tax, and he was not responsible for what has happened in the past four years," he said. "Major is in it up to his neck. What we are getting is Thatcherism without Thatcher." For the moment at least, that appears to be exactly what the British people want.

With reporting by William Mader/London