By A Nose

SURE, THE INCUMBENT HAD ENjoyed unbeatable popularity ratings during the gulf war. But with the guns long since quieted and East-West tensions laid to rest, voters no longer cared about his performance abroad. They were too busy fuming about the recession at home and looking for someone to blame for the greed spawned by the conservative revolution of the ’80s. They wanted to talk about domestic issues: health care, education and, of course, jobs. To distinguish himself from the perceived heartlessness of his predecessor, the incumbent called for a kinder, gentler nation. It was a nice touch, if somewhat undermined by the negative campaign tactics he used to needle his main challenger, a hardworking and agile — maybe too agile — politician who called for “change” at every turn and struck voters as not entirely trustworthy. The race was a cliff-hanger right up to election day . . .

On that day — take heart, George Bush — British voters defied the pollsters’ predictions and returned Conservative leader John Major to office by a small but respectable majority. Fears that the election would produce a hung Parliament in which no party commanded a majority proved unfounded: of the 651 seats, the Tories managed to hold 336 (down from 369); Labour took 271 (up from 229); and the Liberal Democrats stayed almost the same at 20, with the remainder going to smaller parties. While Major hailed the Tories’ fourth consecutive electoral win as “a magnificent victory,” in fact it was a non- loss that more aptly reflected voters’ disenchantment with the political alternatives than an embrace of the Conservative agenda. The 101-seat majority the Tories held after the last election in 1987 shrank to 21. Still, Major is expected to preside over a stable government that will serve out its full five-year term.

Disillusioned with the Conservatives, but in the end even more distrustful of Labour, most voters probably would have preferred to check a box marked FED UP. That puts Britain on the same political map as much of Western Europe and North America, where a fragmented vote is steadily chipping away at ruling- party majorities. On both sides of the Atlantic, voters have been seized by a throw-the-bums-out fervor that is confounded by the lack of attractive alternatives.

Given the nature of the victory — a far cry from the comfortable majorities commanded before voters turned against the Thatcher Revolution — the Conservatives plainly were not handed a mandate to forge ahead with a program that has plunged Britain into its longest, deepest recession since World War II. Rather, the Tories can only conclude that they remain more trusted than Labour to curb 9.4% unemployment, high interest rates and the spate of business bankruptcies and closures. Ultimately, Labour’s attempts to convince voters that it had shed its socialist spots failed. The party’s renunciation of its old high-taxing, free-spending habits were offset by promises to shore up education, health care and other domestic programs, which Britain’s largest accounting firm calculated would add $47 billion to the national budget.

The results may have primarily reflected the sway of personality politics, a phenomenon familiar to Americans but less known to Britons. Right up to the photo finish, the gentlemanly, mild-mannered Major bested Labour leader Neil Kinnock in popularity polls by 10 points. Although Kinnock delivered a slick performance that outshone Major’s on the campaign trail, he could not shake the widely held perception that he is a rather ruthless opportunist who — Bill Clinton, take note — is not entirely to be trusted. Polls indicated that if Labour’s shadow chancellor, the brainy, witty John Smith, had been party leader, Labour would have won the election by a handy majority.

Political analysts are in near unanimity that Kinnock will soon have to relinquish his leadership post — perhaps as early as this week. In the meantime, Kinnock, who had struck a statesmanlike demeanor on the campaign trail, was less than gracious in defeat. “Now the Conservatives will continue with the decline,” he said. “The whole country deserves better.”

High hopes for the Liberal Democrats also proved unfounded. Expected to siphon off blue-collar and middle-class votes from both major rivals, the party instead ended up losing two of its 22 seats. The disappointing showing owed much to alarmist Tory warnings that a vote for the Liberal Democrats would be tantamount to a vote for Labour, since a hung Parliament would surely result in a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition. British voters did not want the uncertainty of either a minority or coalition government. Voters may also have become convinced — Ross Perot, take note — that a vote for a third party is a wasted ballot.

Britain’s whirlwind campaign season, just four weeks long, did little to relieve the malaise. The Tories’ performance was abysmally lackluster, their strategy poorly conceived. A day before calling the election, Major unveiled a budget that failed to provide creative ideas on such important domestic issues as investment, job training or health-care funding. That enabled Kinnock to put Major on the defensive from the start. Moreover, despite his personal popularity, Major proved a disappointing campaigner, often rambling on with coma-inducing lassitude; occasionally his cheerful wading into the crowd met with heckling, and on two occasions he was struck by eggs. Former Tory campaign director Brendan Bruce noted that the campaign was “too negative and lacked clarity.”

The strategy of the Labour effort was far plainer. Using the slogan “It’s Time for Change,” the party played its trump card — the recession — to good advantage. Labourites attacked the Tories for insufficient school funding, delays in the care offered by the National Health Service, and high unemployment. Though Kinnock displays a sharp tongue in House of Commons debates, he has a penchant for obscure verbal meanderings when campaigning; a platoon of media advisers and spin doctors limited Kinnock’s appearances and oversaw his every move.

Less successful were attempts to convince voters that the party had shifted from radical socialism to more centrist policies. During the campaign, Kinnock dismissed some of his old positions as “errors of judgment,” among them his insistence on unilateral nuclear disarmament and the renationalization of some state assets sold off by the Conservatives. Why the switch? “We lost three elections,” said Jack Cunningham, Labour’s campaign coordinator. “That is good enough reason to change policy.” Many voters were left doubting Labour’s sincerity. “Labour jettisoned its ideological baggage without acquiring any new ideas distinctively its own,” says Anthony King, a professor of government at Essex University. “Most people found it hard to say what they stand for.”

That is not surprising. The world has changed dramatically since the tidy divisions of the Thatcher era: the Soviet Union has disintegrated; nuclear jitters have eased; socialism has been discredited. No longer able to draw sharp ideological differences among themselves, Britain’s three largest parties scrambled after the same political turf. All tinkered around the edges of the National Health Service and educational programs. The Conservatives pledged to lower taxes, while Labour promised some hikes — but the differences were not as pronounced as in the past. The most far-reaching change was championed by the Liberal Democrats, who sought to replace the winner-take-all electoral system with proportional representation — an idea that won the support of neither major party nor the voters.

Major now has his popular mandate, but just winning is not enough — and Major knows it. More than half the electorate voted for a non-Tory future. “Their voices will be heard,” he pledged. “I am the Prime Minister for all this country, and I will never forget that.” Secure but no longer impregnable in Parliament, Major and his Conservatives need quickly to address the serious discontent registered at the ballot box. Britons may not have thrown the bums out, as anti-incumbent forces have been urging elsewhere, but they gave the government a formidable scare.