POLITICS : Labor Comeback Has British Tories on the Defensive : A faltering economy and a series of Conservative blunders have given new life to the opposition party.

Britain’s opposition Labor Party, once nearly moribund, has come back to life with unexpected zest, leaving the governing Conservatives in a dither.

In recent samplings, several public opinion polls have shown the Labor Party running six to eight percentage points ahead of the Tories, a lead that Labor is maintaining. Just a couple of months ago, when questioners asked which party would be favored in a national election, the answers put the Conservatives clearly in front.

And while Prime Minister John Major personally runs slightly ahead of Labor leader Neil Kinnock in the polls, his popularity is waning six months after taking over from Margaret Thatcher.

These opinion samplings were reflected in last month’s special election for the Monmouth parliamentary seat, when the Labor candidate overturned a huge Tory majority to win.

Part of Labor’s new-found popularity is attributed to Kinnock’s success in moving the left-leaning party toward the political center, ridding it of the favored Tory description, “the looney left.”

Kinnock has found a new tailor and appears at parliamentary debates in a natty, dark double-breasted suit. He has moderated the length of his questions and answers, which once earned him the title, “the Welsh Windbag.”

Kinnock is backed up by a bright team, his “shadow Cabinet.” The deputy party leader, the veteran Roy Hattersley, is a sophisticated, supple debater, and economics spokesman John Smith is formidable in Commons: witty, brainy and a master at the cut-and-thrust of political battle.

A Labor admirer said recently of Smith that he is a practitioner of the “brilliant principle of never kicking a man until he’s down.”

But Labor has also been buoyed by the worsening economic situation--rising unemployment and record bankruptcies--and by a running series of Tory blunders that has called into question the government’s leadership ability.

In recent days, the newspapers have been full of stories about company directors raising their own salaries while calling for employee restraint in the face of falling profits, privatized utilities running up huge profits by increasing the price of services and banks not passing along lower interest rates to their customers.

Hardly had the Major government reversed itself by scrapping the highly unpopular local poll tax when it appears to have gotten on the wrong end of the burgeoning argument over the National Health Service. Although the government claimed that NHS reforms were long overdue to reduce costs and improve hospital efficiency, the ministers failed to make the case to the public. Instead, Labor spokesmen pilloried Major and his party for attempting to save money at the expense of British health. Their clever use of the issue--”lies,” the prime minister charged--was credited with the disastrous Tory showing in the Monmouth by-election.

The government’s stumbling has generated an unprecedented attack by the conservative British press:

“A government of amateurs,” charged the Financial Times.

“Do the Tories harbor a death wish?” asked the Daily Mail.

“Government on the skids,” observed the Sunday Times.

The plight of the Conservatives has led political analysts to suggest that, unless there is a marked upswing in the economy this summer, Major will hold off calling a national election until late spring of 1992.

The respected columnist Peter Jenkins summed up the current political state of play:

“It has been a long haul back for Labor from the pits into which it descended in the early ‘80s. Mr. Kinnock himself looks a much more formidable contender than he ever did when pitted against Margaret Thatcher. He stands taller against John Major, the experience gap narrowed.

“The Labor leader these days wears an aura of confidence, whereas Mr. Major, for all his winning charm, betrays an inner uncertainty about his usurper’s role. The leadership factor is no longer a decisive Tory advantage.”