Defection Leaves Major Without Majority

Battered by hostility to controversial economic and social policies, Prime Minister John Major’s Conservative Party lost its parliamentary majority Friday for the first time in 17 years, boosting opposition demands for quick elections.

The Conservative minority does not automatically mean a voting majority in Parliament for the opposition Labor Party, but it is a bitter blow for Major, whose party trails badly in opinion polls.

The one-seat Conservative majority vanished when a defecting lawmaker, John Gorst, said he would no longer obey party voting instructions. Gorst said he could not support a government that refuses to honor its promise to build a fully equipped hospital emergency room in his North London district.

Since announcing a new budget last month, the government has been under sharp criticism for cuts in health and education spending. On Thursday, students in Manchester threw eggs at Queen Elizabeth II’s car and demonstrated outside a university building where she had gone to inaugurate a new department.

“The government is disintegrating before our eyes. It lurches from one crisis to the next,” said Tony Blair, the Labor Party leader and likely next prime minister. “The shambles cannot go on any longer, and the sooner we get the chance to put them out of their misery, the better.”

Gorst walked away from his party after being told that the hospital in his district would be given a minor accident unit but not a full emergency facility. He rejected assertions by the Health Ministry that the decision fulfilled a promise made to him earlier this year.

A Gallup poll published Friday gave the left-of-center Labor Party a 37-percentage-point lead over the Conservatives, who have ruled since the dawn of the Margaret Thatcher era in 1979. In the past month alone, the Tories, as the Conservatives are known, slumped 10 percentage points in voter esteem, despite a strong economy, low inflation and a 1% income tax cut. The poll gave Labor a 59%-22% advantage, with 12% for the centrist Liberal Democrats.

Under Britain’s parliamentary system, Major must call elections by May, when his five-year term expires. Labor could force a snap election by winning a vote of confidence in Parliament, but analysts say that minor parties voting with the Tories would assure Major’s victory in any showdown vote.

Gorst’s surprise move after angry parliamentary debate aggravated internal tensions brewing all week among Conservatives, who are divided over whether Britain should opt out of European Union plans for a single currency.

“Civil War,” “Meltdown” and “Chaos” were among Friday’s headlines in Britain’s popular press after a tense meeting Thursday between Tory legislators in which pro-European liberals exchanged barbs with conservatives who believe Britain should maintain its distance from any further European integration.

Right-wing legislators within the party have been agitating for the resignation of pro-European Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke. Major says he will not decide on whether to join a common currency until after all the details have been worked out.

The last minority government in Britain came under Labor in the late 1970s and ended with the election victory that launched nearly two decades of Conservative rule--a rule that now seems hurtling to a close.