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- <text id=92TT0880>
- <title>
- Apr. 20, 1992: Britain's Voters:A Major Surprise
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Apr. 20, 1992 Why Voters Don't Trust Clinton
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 24
- WORLD
- From Britain's Voters: A Major Surprise
- </hdr><body>
- <p>The Tories narrowly survive the war on incumbents in Europe
- </p>
- <p> Across Europe, the angry voters of 1992 have been mounting
- ballot-box rebellions against their governments. In France's
- regional elections last month, the ruling Socialists won a
- paltry 18% of the vote. In Italy last week the Christian
- Democrats and their three coalition partners lost their
- governing majority. In Germany xenophobic rightists slithered
- into two state parliaments, breaking the single-party control
- of the Christian Democrats in Baden-Wurttemberg. The opposition
- Social Demo crats barely avoided the same fate in
- Schleswig-Holstein.
- </p>
- <p> But once again Britain refused to follow the European
- Community's lead. The recession was as bad there as it was on
- the Continent, and British voters were just as disgruntled. Even
- so, at the end of a four-week election campaign, they still
- found the Labour Party and its leader Neil Kinnock unconvincing.
- They stuck with the Conservative Party of Prime Minister John
- Major, giving it a majority of 21 seats in the 651-seat House
- of Commons. The Conservatives took 41.9% of the popular vote,
- a slight decrease from the 42.3% they won in 1987, when Margaret
- Thatcher last led the party to victory.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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