Poll tonic for Tories

Press, 30 May 1987, Page 10

Poll tonic for Tories

NZPA-Reuter

The British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, has gained an opinion poll boost after forcing the opposition Labour Party’s plan to scrap Britain’s independent nuclear arsenal into the forefront of the election campaign.

Labour, which had advanced steadily in polls since the campaign opened 11 days ago, saw its fortunes dip even before party leader, Neil Kinnock, pledged to beach the country’s nucleararmed Polaris submarines within weeks of winning

Mrs Thatcher accused Mr Kinnock of wanting to “leave us weaker and more defenceless than when we faced the Nazi tyranny in 1940.

“That is the measure of the abdication that the Socialists are proposing for Britain,” she told a rally in Solihull, central England. “We are in no mood for surrender.”

A new Marplan opinion poll showed the Conservatives widening their lead in the runup to the June 11 election, with 44 per cent support against Labour’s 32 per cent and 21 per cent for the cen-

trist Liberal-Social Democrat Alliance.

Defence has been in the spotlight after Mrs Thatcher seized upon a remark by Mr Kinnock in a week-end television interview that a non-nuclear Power could bolster its conventional forces in such a way as to make any foreign occupation “untenable.”

President Reagan, expressing admiration for the Prime Minister, warned in a subsequent interview in Washington that Labour’s non-nuclear policies were “grievous errors.”