3 Are Lobbying Tories to Succeed Thatcher : Britain: Heseltine, Hurd and Major espouse roughly the same views. Prime minister hasn’t endorsed anyone.

The three candidates to succeed Margaret Thatcher as prime minister and leader of Britain’s Conservative Party outlined their campaign policies Friday, seeking to garner parliamentary votes for next Tuesday’s party election.

Michael Heseltine, 57, former defense secretary and the man chiefly responsible for deposing Thatcher, argued that his leadership and popularity in the country would ensure a Tory victory in the next general election.

Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, 60, said he is best able to unite the wounded Conservatives against the Labor Party in national elections, which must be held within the next 18 months.

John Major, 47-year-old chancellor of the exchequer, suggested that his grasp of economics and his stated goal of a genuinely classless society could ignite electoral support among independent and younger voters.

Each of the three Tory candidates began his short campaign to convince the 372 Conservative members of the House of Commons that he is best suited to inherit the leadership mantle from Thatcher.

All three espouse roughly the same views--uniting the party, achieving closer ties to Europe, and bashing the Labor Party--although Major is considered slightly to the right of Hurd and Heseltine slightly to the left.

There have been no authoritative opinion polls taken since Thatcher announced her resignation Thursday and Hurd and Major entered the race. Heseltine, at first the favorite of London bookmakers, slipped Friday behind Major, with Hurd in third place.

Major’s backers contend that he has been pledged at least one-third of the Tory lawmakers’ votes, while Heseltine declared Friday that 40 of those who had voted for Thatcher in the first round of party balloting last Tuesday are now in his camp.

The prime minister has not made public her views on a successor, although it is widely known that she would much prefer Major or Hurd over Heseltine, whose strong showing in the Tuesday vote led to her resignation announcement two days later.

Meanwhile, Thatcherites denounced the party for forcing out of office its longest-serving prime minister in this century, while other Tories exhorted each other to limit the damage, join forces against the Laborite threat and move ahead.

Thatcher, who initially responded to the popular Heseltine’s strong first-round showing by vowing to fight on, changed her mind after being told by her Cabinet ministers that she would lose in a one-on-one runoff against him. On Friday, inside accounts of the crucial Wednesday night Cabinet meeting were being circulated, leading some Thatcherites to insist that her advisers misinformed her, that she should have fought and would have won.

Most reports said that, finally heeding the public opinion polls that showed Heseltine as a more desirable Tory leader than herself, she resigned as party leader and prime minister to avoid risking the humiliation of losing to a “backbench” member of Parliament whom she has cordially detested for years.

She was also advised that by stepping aside, she would allow some of her Cabinet allies to enter the race and present more effective alternatives to Heseltine. Hurd and Major, who signed on for the race just before the Thursday deadline, are proven Thatcher loyalists.

In next Tuesday’s second-round ballot, whoever gets a majority of votes among the Tories in the House of Commons--187 if everyone votes--will win the party leadership and, by tradition, automatically become prime minister, since the Tories hold power by a comfortable margin of nearly 100 votes.

If none of the three candidates wins outright, a third ballot will be held next Thursday. In that round, voters would name a second-choice candidate. The man in third place would be eliminated and his votes consigned, on the basis of each voter’s second choice, to one of the two leading candidates. That guarantees a winner.

At that point, Thatcher will move out of 10 Downing St. There is no lame-duck period in British politics.

The two stop-Heseltine candidates say they want to give their colleagues a chance to choose between them--the experienced Hurd or the youthful Major. So far the two friends have been gentlemanly to one another.

If Heseltine fails to get a majority on the second ballot, the conventional thinking is that Hurd and Major supporters will agree to name the other candidate as their second choice--thus guaranteeing a Heseltine defeat.

In his opening campaign statement Friday, the white-haired Hurd promised to defeat inflation, advocated a sound money policy and, perhaps most important, promised to make a highly unpopular local community tax instituted by Thatcher “fairer.”

For his part, Major declared Friday that he wanted to open the party “to everyone, whatever their background, interest or creeds,” and called for “a genuinely classless society so that people, according to their ability or good fortune, can rise to whatever position.”

He said he was receiving support from all varieties of Tory lawmakers, “from people with safe seats, people with marginal seats and people with long service in the Commons.”

Heseltine said he was taking soundings Friday that show him “that I will be able--as, quite frankly, so would John and Douglas--to reunite the party. But also I will be able to get out there and win the votes back for the Conservative Party.”

The London Daily Telegraph was quick off the mark Friday to support Hurd, while the London Evening Standard opted for Major. The other newspapers were still making up their minds.

As for the vanquished prime minister, the conservative Daily Express declared, “If there is any consolation, it is the knowledge that history will be infinitely kinder to her than the MPs she served so well for so long.”

The equally right-wing tabloid Daily Star called Thatcher “the True Brit” and added: “The pygmies have taken over. And heaven help us.”

The liberal Guardian declared, “It is best that she is gone.”

The Labor-leaning Daily Mirror called her decision “the only choice” and recommended a general election early next year.

The Independent, which had cooled on her recent performance in office, said: “As dauntless in defeat as in victory, she takes her place among the very greatest of our prime ministers.”

The center-right Times declared: “Her going is monstrous cruel. Three times victor, Mrs. Thatcher towers over her colleagues and her party as a true world statesman.”

The Thatcherite Daily Mail headlined: “Too Damn Good for the Lot of Them,” and said editorially: “Quite simply, she renewed this nation’s self-respect and self-confidence.”

“After this, the last and most cruel month of the greatest peacetime premiership this century, Margaret Thatcher is bowing out, as you would expect of her: With true grit.”