Major disaster.

WHILE Margaret Thatcher was autographing her memoirs at the rate of one signature every 11 seconds, Prime Minister John Major, whose own as yet unwritten memoirs are not likely ever to sell in such quantity, was preparing for the new parliamentary session. If Mr. Major, who is (or seems to be, which is not quite the same thing) a modest man, were to ask advice on what direction his government should now take, the truest answer would be the unhelpful one, "You shouldn't be starting from here."

His administration is currently so unpopular that, in the second of two disastrous special elections, a 39 per cent swing changed a Conservative majority of 23,000 in the general election just over a year before into a 16,427 majority for the Liberal Democrat. County-level government is traditionally the heartland of Conservatism, but in local elections only 1 of 47 counties remained under Conservative control. "The results," admitted the party chairman, Sir Norman Fowler, "were poor." He might have done better to quote Kai Lung: "He who is struck by lightning has no need to consult the Book of Omens." Unfortunately, Mr. Major and his colleagues appear incapable of reading the Book.

They admitted that the voters were trying to say something and promised to listen: but a familiar political process quickly transmuted this pledge into a determination to "explain the government's policies more clearly." They have convinced themselves that their unpopularity has only two real causes--disunity over the Maastricht Treaty and the continuing effects of recession; both of which, they think, will fade from now on.

These have, indeed, been principal factors. The ruthless way in which Maastricht was forced through the House of Commons--culminating in a threat by Mr. Major to his own rebellious followers that he would dissolve Parliament, thereby precipitating a general election in which they would be wiped out--and his subsequent reference (supposedly in private) to the Euroskeptics on his own side as "bastards" did not make a pretty spectacle. Ex-Prime Minister Ted Heath, who has been indulging in what somebody called "the longest sulk in history" since being supplanted by Margaret Thatcher, said the Euroskeptics would be "hated forever."

The Maastricht Treaty has been duly ratified, but to regard the problem as therefore solved is a peculiar piece of political blindness. The consequences, and the hostility they will provoke, are only just beginning, as the tide of European centralism seeps relentlessly into every creek and inlet of British society.

In the short run, however, the domestic economy is, in Britain as in America, more important to most voters. But, again, ascribing all problems to "the recession" won't do. In a spring budget this Conservative government broke its previous year's election pledge with Clintonesque abandon, wiping out in an afternoon a decade of tax-cutting. A delayed 17 per cent tax on household lighting and heating, thinly disguised with humbug about the Rio Summit and the need to conserve fuel, has not yet been imposed--but will be soon, despite impassioned and almost universal condemnation. And another budget statement, for which more tax increases have been adumbrated, is due shortly. Most depressing of all, Conservative spokesmen, including the chancellor of the exchequer, have expressed as their ultimate goal a time when the government would consume only 40 per cent of the national income.

At the Conservative Party Conference in October Mr. Major and his colleagues made what the headlines described as "a shift to the right"; meaning they talked about "old-fashioned values" and harsher penalties for crime. Mr. Major, who spoke, for him, quite capably, also made anti-federalist noises about Europe; which the audience liked, and which annoyed both Mr. Heath and the Europeans. But, since he said nothing substantial, the speech could not accurately be called a shift in any precise direction. However, the immediate, quite real, threat of a challenge to his leadership has been postponed.

Margaret Thatcher, who arrived like a menacing ghost at the feast, gave him her rather cool support. Incumbent prime ministers should not be challenged by their followers, she said pointedly. Immediately afterward came a whole series of interviews--more than one a day for a week--in which she blistered the colleagues who, she believes, betrayed her, and by sheer force of personality, whether liked or loathed, made the contrast with poor rudderless Mr. Major more poignant than ever.

What she didn't do, of course, was mention the two great weaknesses in her legacy. By signing the Single European Act she rendered Maastricht almost inevitable: and, despite her reputation for savage cuts in public spending, she failed actually to cut public spending at all. These birds are now coming home to roost in John Major's eaves.

An allegedly tough spending review this year produced an increase of 2.7 per cent in real terms. The government is currently borrowing pound1,000 for every man, woman, and child in Britain, but says that significant further cuts in public spending (except on defense, naturally) are impossible. The truth is that Britain's welfare state is approaching its predictable conclusion. Cumulative electoral promises have exceeded the economy's power to sustain them. And a dependency culture has been created. For example, an unmarried mother with two children, in receipt of a full hand of benefits, would need a job paying at least pound15,000 a year before it was worthwhile for her to work; a prospect which, for most such girls, is both unattractive and improbable.

There are murmurs now, even at Westminster, of an eventual move toward compulsory private insurance schemes: but these distant ideas are certainly not vote-catchers. And the chancellor of the exchequer, Kenneth Clarke, said the other day that he did not think Britain would ever get the proportion of public spending down to American or Japanese levels, because he didn't want "a society, where we abandon the European tradition of welfare, which is strongest in Britain."

The coming year promises further alarms for Mr. Major. As well as trouble over the fuel tax, there will be another round of local elections in the spring, followed by elections for the European Parliament, in which the Conservative Party is likely to be massacred. At this juncture, say some forecasters, either Mr. Major will give up and resign voluntarily, or the party managers will call on him with a pistol and a single bullet.

The government's rather low-key program for the new session of Parliament seems intended primarily to secure an easy consensus and therefore, Mr. Major hopes, an end to the divisions within the Conservative Party. He, meanwhile, has jumped aboard the bandwagon of those seeking an agreed "solution" to Ireland's interminable troubles. If he could achieve it, of course his reputation would be marvelously enhanced: but holding one's breath for such an outcome is not recommended. The odds are hugely that the new "initiative" will meet the same fate as all previous attempts to find a woolly compromise between two incompatible positions held by unyielding, very un-Majorite men.

Apart from the putative economic recovery, his best hope lies in the nature of the electoral swing, which was violently, and so perhaps transitorily, against the government but not particularly in favor of the Labor Party or the Liberal Democrats. On the other hand, the Canadian example has sent a shiver down Conservative spines.

The clearest strand in popular feeling is total disillusionment with politicians in general. In a recent publicopinion poll 91 per cent declared they didn't believe a word that any politician said. Similar feelings have been detected in the other Western democracies: but, until now, the British political class considered itself relatively immune. Indeed the politicians still show little sign of understanding the depth of their unpopularity.

The Conservative Party has promulgated, and believes, a myth that it was John Majors populist touch (he produced a soap-box and stood on it) which won the last election. In fact it was the press, mainly the tabloid press, which, by luridly exposing the probable tax consequences of a Labor victory, won it for the Conservatives. A turnaround on taxes may prove as fatal as it was for George Bush.

Nevertheless Britain is far from being "in despair," as a cover story in Time magazine suggested a few months ago. Economic optimism may be, at best, tentative: worries about crime in the streets and slackness in the schoolroom are sharply felt and vigorously expressed: above all there is anger at the politicians' failure to grasp the concerns of ordinary people. But this is not an unhealthy frame of mind. It might even work, eventually, in favor of the Conservative Party.

"May it be long before they kiss my bones!" said King Louis IX of France, who was afterward duly sanctified. "May it be long before they read my memoirs!" Mr. Major almost audibly said as he watched Lady Thatcher's furious signing. A fervent prayer, no doubt: and it needs to be.

Mr. Lejeune is NR's longtime London correspondent.