Choosing Thatcherism Minus Thatcher : The chancellor of the exchequer becomes the youngest British prime minister in this century

It probably won’t be clear for some time whether the Conservative Party has chosen in John Major a truly worthy successor to Margaret Thatcher, who has been a giant on the world stage. The truth, which has been added to over each of her 11 1/2 years in power, is that they don’t make many like her anymore.

With the undoubted exception of Winston Churchill she has been her country’s greatest prime minister of this century. No one did more to reorient and restore a troubled and even floundering nation than the shopkeeper’s daughter who became Britain’s first woman PM.

Now the Iron Lady is gone from the front benches of the House of Commons but, judging from Tuesday’s vote for Major, she is hardly forgotten. Of the three candidates for party leader, and so for PM, Major, the chancellor of the Exchequer, was politically closest to Thatcher and indeed had been publicly endorsed by her. Thus, Thatcher succeeded in thwarting the ambitious “Tarzan”--former Defense Minister Michael Heseltine, whose bold challenge to her leadership set in motion the events that triggered her resignation.

Major may not be a Thatcher clone, but there is no doubt he was the favored choice of the Tory right wing, and the one least likely to break dramatically from her policies. This means the Tories presently intend to confront the Labor Party in the next general election with the benefit of all that Thatcherism has meant, minus the sometimes abrasive personality of the lady herself.

For the United States, this probably means a British foreign policy more or less to its continued likening, though Britain without Thatcher in the driver’s seat could be less resistant to the European Community’s glamorous lure. For John Major--who, rare among Conservative Party leaders, never attended a university, and, indeed, dropped out of school at 16--and who once even stood in an unemployment line--this is an extraordinary moment to be thrust so quickly into power. At 47, this son of a onetime circus performer becomes the youngest prime minister in this century. It is impossible not to wish a man well who came from these beginnings and now has achieved the pinnacle of British political power.