EUROPE : Tories Wonder if Major Has Lost His Grip : Prime minister is criticized for his handling of recent economic turmoil. His finance minister is also under fire.

Suddenly, Prime Minister John Major, the fair-haired boy of British politics, is in trouble: Nothing seems to be going right for him, and he faces a potentially hostile audience at the annual conference of his ruling Conservative Party next week.

Although Major led his party to victory only last April and thus does not face another national contest for about four years, many Tories fear that he may have lost his grip--particularly in the field of economics, his specialty.

That perception also extends to Major’s chancellor of the exchequer, Norman Lamont, whose authority in restoring the faith of the markets and the public in the government’s economic policy has been seriously questioned.

Major and Lamont were lampooned by John Smith, new leader of the opposition Labor Party, at Labor’s conference this week as “the Laurel and Hardy of British politics.”

“Their performance has been bloody awful these past days,” said a senior Tory who asked not to be identified. “We are in a lot of trouble.”

In Britain, they say that a week is a long time in politics, and the 49-year-old Major’s long week came in mid-September, when a monetary run on the pound sterling forced the prime minister and his chancellor to withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), which ties the European economies loosely together to prevent heavy fluctuations in value.

But Major and Lamont compounded their dilemma by their apparent indecision--first insisting that they would defend the pound against devaluation by buying sterling and raising interest rates, then pulling out of the ERM and reversing course by dropping interest rates.

Although many financial commentators indicated that there were good reasons for the government action--mainly because the German Bundesbank refused to significantly lower its own high interest rates--Major did not clearly articulate his policy and left almost everyone confused.

When he spoke on the monetary crisis at a special session of Parliament, Major’s presentation seemed thin and defensive--while Labor’s Smith, an economic specialist, struck many as impressive in his rebuttal.

Major has also been defending his support of the Maastricht Treaty, which calls for closer European monetary and political union but which is increasingly unpopular among many Conservatives.

Many Tories are calling for a national referendum on the issue--in which they hope the treaty would fail--rather than the straight parliamentary vote that Major prefers.

Major has shelved a vote on Maastricht pending a decision by Denmark on what to do about the vote last June in which Danes rejected the treaty--a development that, if it stands, could doom the agreement.

The prime minister, too, is beset by a rise of anti-German feeling in Britain as a result of Bonn’s policy of seeking higher interest rates to pay for the unexpected steep costs of German unification.

“John Major’s problem is that Britain got into the ERM at the worst possible time at an unrealistic high rate versus the deutschemark,” commented one Western diplomat here. Major needs a hand from French President Francois Mitterrand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl “to re-ribbon the Maastricht package,” the diplomat said. “And when your fate rests on such partners, you’re in trouble.”

All eyes will be on Major when he addresses the Tory conference next week. The consensus is that he must make a strong, coherent policy speech if he would stave off internal criticism of the sort that brought down his predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, when her own party turned against her.

The former prime minister, now known as Lady Thatcher, will be addressing the convention, too, and Major’s aides worry that she might upstage him with an anti-Maastricht speech--or at least receive a rapturous welcome exceeding Major’s own.

“It’s been a bloody awful two weeks,” a Conservative Party official said. “But John Major is not out. He can--and will--come back with flying colors next week.”