John Major

British election campaigns once were the lull before the lull, the issues-dominated domain of conservatives combating workers, and trade unions with grudges to settle. In this post-ideology year, amid imported-from-America glitz, there is a sea change: The 1997 search for new government has been an always articulate, sometimes zany spectacle long on style but short on substantive differences.

The long-anticipated call to arms finally came on a brilliant spring morning. Wearing a jaunty smile and a pink shirt before the prime minister's front door at 10 Downing St. on Monday, John Major invited Britain to a national election May 1 that is expected to write his political epitaph. After his ritual consultation with Queen Elizabeth II, Major's announcement of the election date ended months of political skirmishing, conjecture and maneuvering.

The long-anticipated call to arms finally came on a brilliant spring morning. Wearing a jaunty smile and a pink shirt before the prime minister's front door at 10 Downing St. on Monday, John Major invited Britain to a national election May 1 that is expected to write his political epitaph. After his ritual consultation with Queen Elizabeth II, Major's announcement of the election date ended months of political skirmishing, conjecture and maneuvering.

Ideology is dead, historic differences are blurred, personalities dominate. Sex and sleaze grab bigger headlines than ideas and issues. Sound familiar? Well, this time it is the British who are voting. Not Bill and Bob, but close enough: John and Tony are waging a "presidential-style" election campaign with a strong American accent. The winner, incumbent Conservative John Major or Labor Party challenger Tony Blair, gets a five-year term as prime minister.

The British are having an election today, but given the way American journalists and pundits covered the campaign, it might as well have been an American election they were talking about. All we heard was how much the British, in their political style, are just like us. Prime Minister John Major was routinely compared to George Bush on the eve of his repudiation by the American electorate in 1992.

British Prime Minister John Major warned the Irish Republican Army and its political wing, Sinn Fein, on Monday that they can expect "no sympathy and no quarter" if they choose the bomb over the ballot box in Northern Ireland. In a rare televised address to the nation, Major vowed to hunt down those responsible for Friday's fatal IRA car bombing in London that marked the end of the outlawed group's 17-month-old cease-fire.

Facing down a fierce opposition attack and defectors from his own party, British Prime Minister John Major put his government on the line Monday in an incendiary parliamentary vote over illegal arms sales to Iraq--and won by a hair. Major's Conservatives won 320-319 in a vote that undercuts the impact of a report faulting government officials for their handling of the weapons sales in the years before the Persian Gulf War.

British Prime Minister John Major had a tense meeting with leaders of Northern Ireland's main Roman Catholic party as he fought to revive a peace process stalled by the worst violence in years. Parliament members from the Social Democratic and Labor Party, leaving Major's Downing Street offices, said they had accused his government of capitulating to pressure from the majority Protestants in the province.

Farmers demanded Tuesday that Britain order the destruction of its oldest cattle to calm public fears of "mad cow disease," but Prime Minister John Major refused and blamed the crisis on his political opponents. Major struggled to calm frightened consumers, but his political enemies added to the sense of crisis, accusing him of "mind-boggling" incompetence and jeering him in a raucous House of Commons session.

British Prime Minister John Major's proposal for elections in Northern Ireland drew a strong rebuff from the Irish government Thursday, throwing into question the future of the tortuous quest for peace. Elections suddenly replaced arms surrender as the biggest sticking point in the search for a way to end sectarian violence in the British-controlled province.