EUROPE : High-Flying Tories Come Down to Earth--With a Lame Duck

President Jimmy Carter was contemplating a second term when Britain’s Conservatives swept to office behind Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Now, almost 17 years and three presidents later, the end seems near for the Tories’ remarkable run.

A victim of time and the ravages of power, Prime Minister John Major is a conspicuous lame duck. He could be forced into early general elections this year--with every prospect of losing.

Major succeeded Thatcher in 1990 and won an election of his own two years later. But sagging popularity and feuding among divided and disillusioned Conservatives have cut to the bone both Major’s parliamentary majority and his prospect for longevity.

As a result, policies as fundamental to the national future as Britain’s role in Europe and the fate of the delicate Northern Ireland peace process are now hostage to Major’s lukewarm friends--and his hungry-eyed enemies.

Emma Nicholson, a 54-year-old pro-Europe moderate, personifies the mood of rebellion and the internecine anger it is stoking among the beleaguered Tories.

When Nicholson entered politics 21 years ago, her party choice was plain: Her father was a Conservative member of Parliament for 30 years. Representing Devon in western England, Nicholson rose steadily, at one point serving as a deputy leader of the party.

But last week, as the year turned, so did Nicholson: She defected from the Conservatives, denouncing the party’s waffling on Europe and its increasingly hard-line social agenda.

Major’s government, Nicholson said, “seems paralyzed by indecision, waiting for an election which cannot long be delayed and relying increasingly on the worst, hard-faced popular instincts of people who would have been no more than a small and disregarded right-wing pressure group in the Tory party I joined.”

Nicholson joined the centrist Liberal Democrats, the third party in the Commons.

Nicholson’s switch was the second humiliating defection in three months for Major’s party. In October, rebel Alan Howarth became the first Tory member of Parliament to bolt to the opposition Labor Party.

This week, Major scoffed at rumors of possible new defections. He vows there will be no election before the term he won in 1992 expires in spring 1997.

The numbers do not favor him, though. On the one hand, Major trails Labor’s squeaky-clean, new-face Tony Blair by as much as 30 percentage points in the polls, a powerful reason for wanting an election later rather than sooner. On the other hand, Major must reckon to lose his parliamentary control sooner rather than later.

The Tory majority, a comfortable 21 when Major won three years ago, is now between one and five. Even if defections don’t shift the balance, death likely will in coming months.

Major could soldier on with a minority government, analysts say, but at what cost? Even now, he can no longer be sure of victory on votes to link Britain nearer to its European Union partners.

And amid inevitable Labor maneuvering to force a fatal vote of confidence, the Conservatives’ most logical allies are the nine legislators of the Ulster Unionists. But they represent Protestants in Northern Ireland, where Major’s ministers vow not to play political favorites.