Feeling bad.

THE BRITISH are in a dangerous mood--pessimistic, angry, frustrated. Their concerns are very much like those dramatically demonstrated by American voters in November. But there is a vital difference. In Britain the Republicans--in the shape of the Conservative Party--are already in power, and the only foreseeable alternative, the Labour Party, has actually been modeling itself on the Clinton Democrats. Disillusionment with politicians in general, indeed with the whole system, is a reasonable response.

No election is pending in Britain soon. Prime Minister John Major, whose personal clinging to office makes limpets look feeble, has let it be known that, unless his administration, eroded by death and dissension, becomes unsustainable, he will carry on until the last possible minute--just over two years from now.

The Conservatives are currently more unpopular than at any other time since public opinion polls began; the Labour Party has a huge lead. And yet Mr. Major and his close colleagues remain quite unrepentant and uncomprehending. They still believe that the genuine improvement in Britain's economy, manifested in a good rate of growth and relatively low inflation--achievements for which they give themselves total credit--will eventually bring its electoral reward. That there is no "feel good" factor yet they attribute to the public's near-sightedness, the remedy for which is that the government should "get its message across" more effectively.

Mr. Major, therefore, despite a catastrophic special election shortly before Christmas and a humiliating reverse in Parliament, has not shown any of President Clinton's readiness to bend with the wind. The party leaders and managers glow with indignation if anybody suggests that they've bungled. The truth is that a spectator hardly needs to take a view on any of the particular issues in order to see that a government which has landed itself amid such a political shambles must have got something rather seriously wrong.

Over a controversial, but not crucial, bill to pour extra quantities of British taxpayers' money into the bottomless pit of "Europe"--what was originally the Common Market, and then became the European Economic Community, and then simply the European Community, and is now the European Union (without so much as a rubber stamp from the electorate)--Mr. Major threatened, if he were defeated, to pull down the pillars of the temple by calling an immediate general election, in which his own party would, as he and everyone else knew, be wiped out. He extorted from each member of the cabinet individually a pledge of support for this suicide pact. The pretext was that an administration which loses its power to tax and spend cannot continue in office; a constitutional theory which was, of course, never intended to cover this kind of situation. Mr. Major also said that he had given his word to the Europeans--cause enough, perhaps, if his promise could not be kept, for him to resign but scarcely for him to hand the country over to the socialists.

Faced with an imminent threat of Gotterdammerung, most of the rebels came into line. Eight Conservative backbenchers, however, did not, and were promptly expelled from the parliamentary party. A ninth, Sir Richard Body (in whose presence, John Major once said, he could hear "the flapping of men in white coats," but who is actually as sane and honorable a politician as you could wish to meet), voluntarily joined them in exile.

The administration preened itself on having shown the smack of firm government. Less firm was its grasp of arithmetic. By expelling nine members of the party Mr. Major's government lost its formal majority in the House of Commons. The Conservative Party has never before in living memory expelled an MP on ideological grounds--not over Munich, not over Suez, not over Thatcherism. Never before has a British government of any complexion gratuitously thrown away its own majority.

The rebel nine, thus freed from the chains of discipline and aware that their local Conservative Associations, despite fearsome threats, largely support them, now rejoice in their power. They have already helped to defeat a proposal by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to increase the tax on household fuel. This defeat, since it involved another taxing and spending matter, might surely have been cause for resignation. But instead, notwithstanding an assurance from the chairman of the party that they would not simply replace one unpopular tax with another, the chancellor increased the existing onerous taxes on tobacco, alcohol, and gasoline.

The result of these shenanigans has been great bitterness within the party. So inexplicable does the government's behavior seem that a theory has been floated according to which Mr. Major deliberately provoked the rebels in order to disqualify those most likely to mount a challenge to his leadership. The potential for similar crises over the next few months would appear limitless.

Public distaste for such squabbling has become the government's latest excause for its unpopularity. The truth is, however, that internal divisions, though unhelpful, are a minor element. The feel-good factor is missing because most people have nothing to feel good about. Almost everybody is paying higher taxes than when this government was elected--on a promise to hold taxation down; an export-led recovery, although economically virtuous, makes no one but exporters feel good; and low inflation, while desired in theory, holds insufficient positive appeal to voters who had grown accustomed to constantly inflating paychecks. The government, for all its tough talk about spending cuts, still unashamedly spends nearly half the entire national income, and, despite a declared campaign against over-regulation, continues to pour out new regulations.

Underlying everything is the issue of Europe. Just suppose that an American President had signed, not a mere trading agreement with the other nations of North America or the Pacific Rim, but a treaty leading inevitably toward full political union! There is talk in Britain, belatedly, about a referendum, but the question posed and the pre-referendum campaign would almost certainly be rigged to secure the right (from the government's point of view) answer. The one strong card--possibly a winning one--that the Conservative Party could play at the next election would be to take a clear anti-European line, but this is rendered impossible by the Europhiles in its own senior ranks.

When you consider that the principal opposition parties are even more Europhile than the government, more openly inclined to high taxation, more instinctively given to regulating everything, can you wonder that the British don't feel good?