Mrs. Thatcher's Dog Days

...David Owen, the former Labor Foreign Minister who is the leader of the Social Democratic Party, has shown himself to be a far more convincing figure in the House of Commons...

...Even many politicians who once loyally supported the Prime Minister are now openly expressing very strong and persistent doubts about her overbearing manner...

...At the moment, the Prime Minister's strengths still outweigh her weaknesses, especially when she is compared with any of her potential challengers...

...One of her most recent blunders was provoked by the infuriating extravagances and taunting charm of Ken Livingston, the revolutionary Socialist leader of the Greater London Council (GLQ...

...Numerous Conservatives have joined those who delight in pointing up each difficulty she encounters, each questionable decision she makes, each political banana skin she slips on...

...A reshuffle of the Cabinet is expected soon—some consider it inevitable, given the government's spate of blunders—but no change in Mrs...

...Ministers who challenge Thatcher's views, or are less than enthusiastic in executing her programs, are chucked out—the fate of former Foreign Secretary Francis Pym, who objected to the "Iron Lady's" unbending, impetuous approach...

...Butshemovedinahur-ried and disorganized way...

...In fact, her attempt to interfere with local self-government was so high-handed that the Tory-dominated House of Lords, a body Livingston wants to do away with, forced her to change her plans and to delay their implementation...

...It may happen...

...They note that in clamping down on Left-wing local governments, Thatcher disdained to consult the many Tory local councilors whose own programs and interests would be affected...

...In the past, therefore, Cabinet meetings could be lively and productive, and prime ministers occasionally felt it necessary to modify their opinions if a majority of their colleagues opposed them...

...Thatcher's Dog Days BY NORMAN GELB London It is increasingly difficult these days to find anyone outside Margaret Thatcher's palace guard with a kind word to say on her behalf...

...But never before during her five-year tenure at Number 10 Downing Street have attacks on her performance reached such a crescendo...

...Televised scenes of violence have shocked the British public, inducing a feeling of greater security for having the Iron lady in charge to keep things from getting completely out of hand...

...Their enthusiasm has been intensified by a personal dislike—in some cases, detestation— for Thatcher and what they regard as her "nanny in the nursery" manner of governing the country...

...Distressed by the situation, several prominent Conservatives have been asking out loud where the Prime Minister is taking the country and the party...

...But she certainly does hold the reins of power, and she sometimes knows just how to crack them...

...Thatcher has been further aided by the tactics of Arthur Scargill, the ultra-Leftist president of the coal miners' union...

...Those Conservatives who have spoken out against her publicly or in private mostly seem to be the kind of people Harry Truman advised to get out of the kitchen...

...But his effectiveness is limited by the small size of his party's parliamentary group as well as by the intensity of his resentment against Labor and the counter-resentment it inspires...

...And the inflationary spiral, brought down sharply by early Thatcherite policies, is now beginning to climb once more...

...The key to the Prime Minister's present problems may well be that she is an extremely strong-willed person and seems to have grown weary of the ordinary processes of government...

...Indeed, her efforts to promote and enforce her policies have sometimes been so inept as to provoke the feeling that Big Sister was laying down the law without regard for Britain's traditional, albeit unwritten, system of consultaNorman Gelb is The New Leader's London correspondent...

...His latest book, Less Than Glory: A Revisionist's View of the American Revolution, has just been published by G.P...

...She also offended the small yet faithful corps of Tory trade unionists by totally ignoring them when she introduced strong measures to diminish the unions' ability to paralyze British industry...

...Never one to accept internal dissent with good grace, she now finds it quite intolerable, causing difficulties in her own Cabinet...

...In an effort to win a strike called to frustrate the National Coal Board's planned closure of noneconomic pits— and, he says, to bring down the government—Scargill has sent roving bands of several thousand miners into pitched battles with police protecting the many workers who have refused to go out...

...At the very least, senior Cabinet members could secure a policy review where strong disagreement was involved...

...tion and checks-and-balances...

...The country is starting to realize, however, that the cost of keeping the Union Jack flying over those remote, unproductive rocks in the South Atlantic will be very high...

...But whatever goes on there will almost surely not be of great importance...

...Clearly, her critics warn, there is a communications gap between the Prime Minister and people who should be privy to her thoughts...

...Thatcher has instead turned the men in her Cabinet—and they are exclusively men—into mere shadows of herself...

...Putnam's Sons...

...She will probably slip on more banana skins and ignore or offend more people...

...Despite considerable intelligence and substantial records of achievement, they sometimes openly vie for her approval or keep discreetly mum when not required to speak out on delicate questions of state...

...All three have been plentiful of late, both in domestic and international affairs...

...Even thz Economist, a journal not usually given to criticizing the Tory powers that be, laments that Number 10 Downing Street has become a "curiously empty place...

...Although they almost invariably accept the fundamental outlook and plans of the leader who appoints them, they frequently have their own beliefs, enthusiasms and proposals...

...Thatcher's attitude or her ministers' subservience is likely...

...Pym denies that he is leading a Tory revolt, but he has just written a book protesting that the head of the British government should be more attuned to compromise and persuasion...

...First of all, her tendency to act in haste notwithstanding, she is a far more astute political animal than any of her Tory critics—all of whom are themselves guilty of many gaffes and miscalculations...

...In addition, at home the level of unemployment continues to rise...

...Across the aisle, Labor Party Leader Neil Kinnock is continually undermined by members of his Left Wing—who somehow imagine that the British working class, after earlier failing to vote against Thatcher in sufficient numbers to bring her down, is today prepared to fight her on the barricades...

...Yet for all her fumbling, as matters stand it would be foolish to suggest that Margaret Thatcher is riding for a fall...

...Kinnock, moreover, is proving to be a rather lightweight opponent in his sparring with the Prime Minister...

...The Prime Minister flaps around its corridors like a solitary hawk looking for prey...

...Thatcher's much-trumpeted assurances that the European Economic Community would not be allowed to fleece Britain have turned, meanwhile, into examples of shrill and vacuous howlings...

...As a nanny, she may not be fun-loving Mary Poppins...

...No doubt Britain's victory in the Falklands war against Argentina brought Thatcher more popularity than President Reagan won through the Grenada exploit...

...An ongoing campaign to compel other Labor-controlled local governments to reduce their sometimes prodigal outlays has been badly handled, too: It seems to include a pointless attack on essential welfare programs these bodies run...

...To deprive "Citizen Ken" and other Labor Leftists of a platform, the Prime Minister decided to press for the abolition of the GLC and other major metropolitan councils...

...All that has changed...

...Similarly, no serious effort was made to keep leading educators informed of projected major reforms in higher and secondary education...

...Certain Tory circles are reverberating with rumors that questions about Margaret Thatcher's leadership will be raised at the party's annual conference in the autumn...

...Thus a decision to ban unions at the top-security intelligence-gathering headquarters in Cheltenham has actually been reversed by a judge on the grounds that the lack of prior consultation with the affected employees violated "natural justice...

...The Labor Party and the Social Democratic-Liberal Alliance, of course, have always energetically fulfilled the obligation embodied in Disraeli's famous admonition that "The duty of the Opposition is to oppose...

...The financial arrangements she finally accepted were far less beneficial to Britain than the ones she had demanded with great bluster...

...Unlike their counterparts in Washington, members of the British Cabinet are themselves usually prominent politicians with years of government experience...