LONDON, Jan. 13 -- Britain's opposition Labour Party has increased its lead over the ruling Conservatives to a record 43.5 percentage points despite recent internal disputes, said an opinion poll published Friday. The Gallup poll in The Daily Telegraph found only 18.5 percent of those questioned said they would vote for Prime Minister John Major's party in a general election, dragging Tory ratings below 20 percent for the first time. Of the 1,080 interviewees, 62 percent said they would vote Labour, up 1 percent from December. The Tories' score slipped 3 points from 21.5 percent. The poll showed the gap between the two parties exceeding 40 percentage points for the first time. The newspaper attributed some of Labour's lead to Tories' 'reluctance to confess their party allegiance.' A separate Gallup poll found 51 percent supported Labour's controversial pledge to give Scotland its own parliament, while 31 percent opposed it. The survey said 42 percent thought a Scottish assembly could cause the break-up of the United Kingdom, and 40 percent said there would be no difference. Labour's lead came despite a rift over leader Tony Blair's efforts to water down the party's commitment to nationalization. Labour lawmakers in the European Parliament attacked Blair this week for his plan to rewrite the party's constitution, with one of the dissenters accusing Blair of abandoning socialism. The party has also backtracked on proposals to tax private school fees. In Gallup's December poll, however, 43.9 percent of interviewees said Blair would make a better prime minister, against 13.8 percent for Major.
Major, under pressure to boost Tory esteem, was reported in The Times Friday to have started work early on a new Conservative election manifesto, although there may be two years until the next general election. The British Broadcasting Corp. said he was also wooing Tory 'Euro- rebels' back into the parliamentary party after their suspension over their refusal to support the government in a confidence vote in November. The suspension of the nine rebels, who oppose Britain's closer integration into the European Union, has wiped out the Conservatives' majority in Parliament.
