Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 7, 1990                   TAG: 9004070038
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: LONDON                                LENGTH: Medium

THATCHER POPULARITY AT LOWEST, POLL SAYS

She is currently approved by only 24 percent of voters, less than half the 53 percent who supported her at her 1983 peak.

But one of Thatcher's aides shrugged off her poll rating, saying: "Her greatest strength is she has never aspired to be popular. She has never wanted to be loved.

Gallup, in a poll published in Friday's London Daily Telegraph, found that the Labor Party enjoys a 24.5 percent edge over Thatcher's Tories, the largest Labor lead over the Conservatives since Gallup started measuring public opinion here 50 years ago.

Labor had 52.5 percent, the Conservatives 28 percent and the Liberal Democrats 7.5 percent.

Thatcher has time to fight back. She need not call an election until the summer of 1992, although traditionally most prime ministers have preferred not to wait until the end of their five-year term. She also has a commanding 100-seat majority in the 650-seat House of Commons and so can dictate the legislative program.

The setback, the worst in a long line of reversals for her over the past year, comes as members of Parliament head home for the Easter recess to face their constituents' outrage over a new poll tax and continuing high interest rates.

Inside the prime minister's office on Downing Street, officials are reacting with stoicism, but there is mounting concern that Thatcher's leadership may be in jeopardy.

The Conservative Party has a history of dumping leaders who lose their political touch, and the most alarming aspect of Thatcher's current unpopularity is that it stems from a perception that her usually sensitive finger has slipped off the national pulse on a series of issues ranging from reform of the national health service to education policy.

Her aides admit that the immediate prospect is daunting, with inflation likely to creep higher before it starts to decline and the imposition of the new tax inevitably producing more negative reaction as the bills arrive on people's doorsteps.

The result is likely to be a major Tory defeat in next month's local elections, which Labor will certainly seize on as a harbinger of their impending return to national power after more than a decade of Thatcherism.

"It's going to be a hard fight," said one of Thatcher's top aides. "You can bet your bottom dollar that sooner of later there's going to be a swing back.. . . The government is down the slot by 25 percent, but there aren't many people who have any confidence that the opposition is going to win."

The government, he said, would make Labor and its high-spending social policies the major issue at the next election.