War Role Strengthens Prime Minister Major : Britain: His leadership puts him in a strong position for talks with Gorbachev and possibly early elections.

British Prime Minister John Major leaves for Moscow on Monday, riding high in the public opinion polls after confidently leading the nation during the Gulf War.

That standing has increased the possibility of an early election, according to political observers, and some advisers are urging Major to take advantage of his popularity before a negative reaction from the economic recession sets in.

Major, 47, has measured up to his responsibilities, in the view of many, and will be talking to Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev as the leader of a successful fighting force in the Gulf and as a man who survived an assassination attempt, unruffled.

On Thursday, a parliamentary by-election in the northwest Ribble Valley constituency--ordinarily a Conservative Party stronghold--might serve as an indicator for an early national election.

Or the prime minister might wait until after the nationwide local elections on May 2 to determine how the political winds are blowing. Some political commentators suggest that Major might even combine a national election with the local balloting then.

Major has indicated that he does not want to take advantage of a Gulf War victory to call an early, “khaki” election. National balloting must be held sometime in the next 16 months.

Though the British commitment to the allied forces in the Gulf originally was made by then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who resigned in late November, Major has received widespread praise--including glowing words from his predecessor--for his cool handling of the crisis.

Opposition leader Neil Kinnock of the Labor Party and Liberal Democratic chief Paddy Ashdown also have been commended for their support of the British presence in the Gulf.

But it is Major who stands to gain the most at the polls, because he has proven himself a strong, collected leader in wartime.

Major also has departed from Thatcher’s “conviction” politics, instead preferring a broader consensus that has appealed to Britons during a period of international crisis abroad and deepening recession at home.

Occupying the political center in a way that Thatcher probably could not, Major’s style is being called “soft-focus conservatism.”

As Conservative Party chairman Chris Patten said Saturday: “We have turned a difficult corner after Margaret Thatcher. There is a new mood of confidence in the party.”

The opinion polls show Major running comfortably ahead of Kinnock, and London bookmakers have made the Conservatives odds-on favorites.

The bookies also are making June a favorite date for a national election, with May a close second and October third.

In a political speech Saturday to the Conservative local government conference in London, Major showed he could be hard-hitting against Labor opposition.

He attacked the “incompetence and waste” of Labor-run councils across the country and he blamed the “infiltration of the loony left and shifty center” for damaging local governments.

“What we need in local government,” he said, “is less paper and more action; less empire building and more innovation; less government and a bit more service. That must be the Conservative way in the years ahead.”

Major stressed that education must be a top Tory government priority in the coming decade.

Major is expected to make some amendments to the unpopular poll tax for raising local government funds. Further, he is expected to reduce the interest rate in the next two months.

The chief Tory obstacle is the lagging economy, observers say, but Major can take some comfort in the fact that the Labor opposition has not spelled out any sure way to combat the recession.