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                                                                                BRITAIN, Page 71

By a Nose


Denied a resounding mandate, John Major must shape a program
that can cure the national malaise and hold a strengthened
opposition at bay

By JILL SMOLOWE -- Reported by William Mader and William
Rademaekers/London


    Sure, the incumbent had enjoyed unbeatable popularity
ratings during the gulf war. But with the guns long since
quieted and East-West tensions laid to rest, voters no longer
cared about his performance abroad. They were too busy fuming
about the recession at home and looking for someone to blame for
the greed spawned by the conservative revolution of the '80s.
They wanted to talk about domestic issues: health care,
education and, of course, jobs. To distinguish himself from the
perceived heartlessness of his predecessor, the incumbent called
for a kinder, gentler nation. It was a nice touch, if somewhat
undermined by the negative campaign tactics he used to needle
his main challenger, a hardworking and agile -- maybe too agile
-- politician who called for "change" at every turn and struck
voters as not entirely trustworthy. The race was a cliff-hanger
right up to election day . . .

    On that day -- take heart, George Bush -- British voters
defied the pollsters' predictions and returned Conservative
leader John Major to office by a small but respectable majority.
Fears that the election would produce a hung Parliament in which
no party commanded a majority proved unfounded: of the 651
seats, the Tories managed to hold 336 (down from 369); Labour
took 271 (up from 229); and the Liberal Democrats stayed almost
the same at 20, with the remainder going to smaller parties.
While Major hailed the Tories' fourth consecutive electoral win
as "a magnificent victory," in fact it was a non-loss that more
aptly reflected voters' disenchantment with the political
alternatives than an embrace of the Conservative agenda. The
101-seat majority the Tories held after the last election in
1987 shrank to 21. Still, Major is expected to preside over a
stable government that will serve out its full five-year term.

    Disillusioned with the Conservatives, but in the end even
more distrustful of Labour, most voters probably would have
preferred to check a box marked FED UP. That puts Britain on the
same political map as much of Western Europe and North America,
where a fragmented vote is steadily chipping away at
ruling-party majorities. On both sides of the Atlantic, voters
have been seized by a throw-the-bums-out fervor that is
confounded by the lack of attractive alternatives.

    Given the nature of the victory -- a far cry from the
comfortable majorities commanded before voters turned against
the Thatcher Revolution -- the Conservatives plainly were not
handed a mandate to forge ahead with a program that has plunged
Britain into its longest, deepest recession since World War II.
Rather, the Tories can only conclude that they remain more
trusted than Labour to curb 9.4% unemployment, high interest
rates and the spate of business bankruptcies and closures.
Ultimately, Labour's attempts to convince voters that it had
shed its socialist spots failed. The party's renunciation of its
old high-taxing, free-spending habits were offset by promises
to shore up education, health care and other domestic programs,
which Britain's largest accounting firm calculated would add $47
billion to the national budget.

    The results may have primarily reflected the sway of
personality politics, a phenomenon familiar to Americans but
less known to Britons. Right up to the photo finish, the
gentlemanly, mild-mannered Major bested Labour leader Neil
Kinnock in popularity polls by 10 points. Although Kinnock
delivered a slick performance that outshone Major's on the
campaign trail, he could not shake the widely held perception
that he is a rather ruthless opportunist who -- Bill Clinton,
take note -- is not entirely to be trusted. Polls indicated that
if Labour's shadow chancellor, the brainy, witty John Smith, had
been party leader, Labour would have won the election by a handy
majority.

    Political analysts are in near unanimity that Kinnock will
soon have to relinquish his leadership post -- perhaps as early
as this week. In the meantime, Kinnock, who had struck a
statesmanlike demeanor on the campaign trail, was less than
gracious in defeat. "Now the Conservatives will continue with
the decline," he said. "The whole country deserves better."

    High hopes for the Liberal Democrats also proved
unfounded. Expected to siphon off blue-collar and middle-class
votes from both major rivals, the party instead ended up losing
two of its 22 seats. The disappointing showing owed much to
alarmist Tory warnings that a vote for the Liberal Democrats
would be tantamount to a vote for Labour, since a hung
Parliament would surely result in a Labour-Liberal Democrat
coalition. British voters did not want the uncertainty of either
a minority or coalition government. Voters may also have become
convinced -- Ross Perot, take note -- that a vote for a third
party is a wasted ballot.

    Britain's whirlwind campaign season, just four weeks long,
did little to relieve the malaise. The Tories' performance was
abysmally lackluster, their strategy poorly conceived. A day
before calling the election, Major unveiled a budget that failed
to provide creative ideas on such important domestic issues as
investment, job training or health-care funding. That enabled
Kinnock to put Major on the defensive from the start. Moreover,
despite his personal popularity, Major proved a disappointing
campaigner, often rambling on with coma-inducing lassitude;
occasionally his cheerful wading into the crowd met with
heckling, and on two occasions he was struck by eggs. Former
Tory campaign director Brendan Bruce noted that the campaign was
"too negative and lacked clarity."

    The strategy of the Labour effort was far plainer. Using
the slogan "It's Time for Change," the party played its trump
card -- the recession -- to good advantage. Labourites attacked
the Tories for insufficient school funding, delays in the care
offered by the National Health Service, and high unemployment.
Though Kinnock displays a sharp tongue in House of Commons
debates, he has a penchant for obscure verbal meanderings when
campaigning; a platoon of media advisers and spin doctors
limited Kinnock's appearances and oversaw his every move.

    Less successful were attempts to convince voters that the
party had shifted from radical socialism to more centrist
policies. During the campaign, Kinnock dismissed some of his old
positions as "errors of judgment," among them his insistence on
unilateral nuclear disarmament and the renationalization of some
state assets sold off by the Conservatives. Why the switch? "We
lost three elections," said Jack Cunningham, Labour's campaign
coordinator. "That is good enough reason to change policy." Many
voters were left doubting Labour's sincerity. "Labour jettisoned
its ideological baggage without acquiring any new ideas
distinctively its own," says Anthony King, a professor of
government at Essex University. "Most people found it hard to
say what they stand for."

    That is not surprising. The world has changed dramatically
since the tidy divisions of the Thatcher era: the Soviet Union
has disintegrated; nuclear jitters have eased; socialism has
been discredited. No longer able to draw sharp ideological
differences among themselves, Britain's three largest parties
scrambled after the same political turf. All tinkered around the
edges of the National Health Service and educational programs.
The Conservatives pledged to lower taxes, while Labour promised
some hikes -- but the differences were not as pronounced as in
the past. The most far-reaching change was championed by the
Liberal Democrats, who sought to replace the winner-take-all
electoral system with proportional representation -- an idea
that won the support of neither major party nor the voters.

    Major now has his popular mandate, but just winning is not
enough -- and Major knows it. More than half the electorate
voted for a non-Tory future. "Their voices will be heard," he
pledged. "I am the Prime Minister for all this country, and I
will never forget that." Secure but no longer impregnable in
Parliament, Major and his Conservatives need quickly to address
the serious discontent registered at the ballot box. Britons may
not have thrown the bums out, as anti-incumbent forces have been
urging elsewhere, but they gave the government a formidable
scare.