BRITAIN'S MAJOR LOSES PARLIAMENTARY MAJORITY.Byline: The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times John Major, the embattled em·bat·tled adj. 1. Prepared or fortified for battle or engaged in battle: embattled troops; an embattled city. 2. prime minister, lost his parliamentary majority Friday and came under attack from members of his fractious frac·tious adj. 1. Inclined to make trouble; unruly. 2. Having a peevish nature; cranky. [From fraction, discord (obsolete). party over his insistence that Britain remain engaged in discussions with Europe about a common currency. Sir John Gorst John Gorst may mean:
The part of London north of the River Thames (illustrated). , said the party could no longer rely on his support, a move that stripped the Conservatives of their one-vote majority in the 651-seat House of Commons House of Commons: see Parliament. . It does not immediately threaten the Conservatives' hold on the government because they can depend on the nine members of the pro-British Ulster Unionists to maintain parliamentary control. Tony Blair Noun 1. Tony Blair - British statesman who became prime minister in 1997 (born in 1953) Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, Blair , the leader of the Labor Party, greeted news of the increased vulnerability of the Tories with unrestrained delight. ``The government is disintegrating before our eyes,'' he said in a statement. ``It lurches from one crisis to the next. It is bereft of leadership and direction. It is divided and incompetent and incapable of governing the country. This shambles cannot go on any longer, and the sooner we get the chance to put them out of their misery, the better.'' But Blair avoided calling for an imminent test of the government. Major, who came into office in 1990 with a 21-seat majority, must call a general election by May. Although Labor is still uncertain of forcing an election right away through a confidence vote in Parliament, its lead in the polls has grown to a remarkable spread. A Gallup poll Gallup Poll Noun a sampling of the views of a representative cross section of the population, usually used to forecast voting [after G H Gallup, statistician] Gallup poll n → published Friday in The Daily Telegraph showed Labor's margin widening to 37 percentage points. Asked which party they would vote for were a general election held now, 59 percent of the respondents said Labor, 22 percent Conservative. Sir John based his withdrawal of support on unhappiness with the party's failure to keep a promise to establish a 24-hour casualty unit at a hospital in his district. In parliamentary terminology, he ``resigned the whip,'' meaning he was withdrawing his ``cooperation'' with the government and could no longer be counted on to back it in critical votes. The Conservatives are expected to lose another vote next week in a local election to fill a vacancy. Sir John's announcement took Major by surprise because he was busy on a more troubled front: trying to stem the turmoil that has engulfed his party this week over Britain's ties to Europe. Earlier in the day another Conservative member of Parliament said he might resign his party role because of the dispute over this relationship, and he accompanied the threat with an attack on the prime minister's leadership. The MP, Terry Dicks, from suburban London, said: ``I don't want to be on a ship like the Titanic, where the helmsman can see the ice ahead and simply says: `Let's wait and see what happens.' I am totally disillusioned dis·il·lu·sion tr.v. dis·il·lu·sioned, dis·il·lu·sion·ing, dis·il·lu·sions To free or deprive of illusion. n. 1. The act of disenchanting. 2. The condition or fact of being disenchanted. with the prime minister.'' |
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