Tories Give Big Victory to Major : Britain: Party confidence vote of 218-89 allows the prime minister to remain head of government. He vows to complete a major Cabinet shuffle today.

Prime Minister John Major was reelected Conservative Party leader Tuesday in a convincing vote of confidence that allowed him to remain head of the British government.

Major won the support of two-thirds of the 329 Conservative members of Parliament eligible to vote, prevailing over his challenger, right-wing former Cabinet member John Redwood.

Soon after the balloting, Major appeared outside No. 10 Downing St. to declare that doubts about his party leadership had been dispelled and to announce that he would complete a major shuffle of his Cabinet today.

“It is a very clear-cut decision,” the prime minister said of the tally, calling it the highest margin of victory ever obtained in a British leadership election. “. . . I believe that has put to rest any question or any speculation about the leadership of the Conservative Party up to and beyond the next [general] election.”

Major’s gamble paid off Tuesday--but whether he can continue to hold the divided party together remains to be seen, particularly in the face of Conservative unpopularity and opinion polls favoring the opposition Labor Party.

Major called the party vote 12 days ago in a bid to silence his critics. In doing so, he gambled both the Tory leadership and the prime minister’s post, but his comfortable margin of victory means he can keep both posts with no further balloting.

The final tally gave Major 218 votes to Redwood’s 89. There were eight abstentions, with 12 spoiled ballots, and two members of Parliament did not vote.

Some of Major’s supporters had feared that a small margin of victory would be interpreted as a vote of no-confidence and that he would have had to step down as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher did in November, 1990.

One Tory rebel, Tony Marlow, declared late Tuesday that Major “went into this election wounded. He has come out severely wounded.”

But most of Major’s parliamentary supporters immediately called the result “decisive and convincing,” and Redwood congratulated him on his “fair and square” victory.

Thatcher also praised Major’s clear victory, saying, “We can concentrate on the real enemy: socialism.”

Speaking with his wife, Norma, by his side, and Cabinet members in the background, Major said now it is time for the ruling but fractious Tory party to unite--and turn its political guns around, training them on the Labor Party.

“The time for division is over,” he declared.

But Labor leader Tony Blair said the election showed that Major leads not “one Conservative Party but two.”

“They may come together in some show of unity,” Blair said, “but the divisions are there and completely fundamental. The air has been thick with venom and poison over the last 10 days.”

Liberal Party leader Paddy Ashdown said he was offering the prime minister not congratulations but “commiserations” because he had been “wounded” and the government would be limping until the next general election, which must be held by April, 1997.

Political observers said Redwood ran stronger than expected in the secret ballot but that there had also been fewer abstentions than predicted, which helped Major.

Under party rules, Major had to win a simple majority plus 50 votes to avoid another round of voting.

Some observers suggested that Trade and Industry Minister Michael Heseltine had ordered his supporters to vote for the prime minister--rather than abstaining in hopes of forcing a second ballot that would put Heseltine in the running.

In recent months, Major, 52, has been the object of escalating sniping from right-wing members of his party who object to Britain’s growing participation in the European Union.

Under this pressure, Major called a surprise early leadership election, moved up from November, to force his critics to “put up or shut up.”

An indication of the Tories’ direction and unity will be revealed today when Major announces who will make up his new Cabinet and sub-Cabinet.

Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd has announced his retirement, opening the way for a major shuffle at the top--and eventually through the lower echelons of government.

Observers will note whether right-wingers are given good posts--and, indeed, whether Major will offer a job to Redwood, who resigned as secretary for Wales to challenge him for the leadership.

Major has promised that there would be no retribution against the party’s right-wing members of Parliament.

Among those expected to be offered senior posts for their loyalty to the beleaguered prime minister during the short leadership campaign are Heseltine, Home Secretary Michael Howard, Employment Minister Michael Portillo, Defense Secretary Malcolm Rifkind and Secretary for Scotland Ian Lang.

In his remarks on Downing Street, Major pointedly indicated that the parliamentary voters Tuesday had not listened to the strident editorials of the major British daily newspapers--nearly all of which have opposed his reelection as leader and prime minister.