BRITAIN: Sunny Jim and the Political Winds

They blow, ever so slightly, in his favor as Parliament reconvenes

Swathed in a velvet train, with the imperial crown carefully balanced on her coiffed brown hair, Queen Elizabeth II opened the final session of Parliament before her subjects vote again in a general election. In one of Britain's better pageants, the Queen spoke from a golden throne in the gilded House of Lords, surrounded by such royal functionaries as her Gold Stick in Waiting and the Rouge Dragon Pursuivant. So many ermined peers and bejeweled peeresses were present that a journalistic wag observed there was a "tiara boom today."

The central characters of this year's parliamentary drama, however, were huddled in the rear of the chamber among other members of the House of Commons, who had been summoned to the Queen's presence by another treasured anachronism known as Black Rod. Prime Minister James Callaghan and Conservative Leader Margaret Thatcher listened idly to an arid speech that the government, by custom, had prepared for the Queen to read.

The address—a laundry list of legislative goals—contained little in the way of major news or promise for the new Parliament. The most important item in the Queen's speech was an assurance to Scottish and Welsh nationalists that there would be referendums on March 1 on local assemblies for these areas—the first step toward devolution, or limited home rule. Opposed by Thatcher's Tories, who have 281 seats, and the Liberal Party (13), Callaghan's Labor minority of 312 can now stay in power only with the help of smaller parties. Callaghan needs the votes, or at least the abstentions, of the nationalists this week in the vote of confidence that traditionally follows the Queen's speech after a debate on its content. By winning it, Callaghan should be able to stay in office until he decides to call elections, possibly in early spring or, at the latest, next October, when his government's statutory five-year mandate expires. As always in British elections, the timing will depend on the political winds. At the moment they are blowing Callaghan's way, in part because of the diverse stands that he and Thatcher have taken over incomes policies and their effect on Britain's inflation, now running at an annual rate of 8%.

The Prime Minister wants to carry on with his policy of voluntary wage restraints, under which unions would limit pay-hike demands to no more than 5%. That stand is fiercely opposed by the 11.5 million-member Trades Union Congress, and was violently attacked by Callaghan's own Labor Party Conference at its annual meeting in Blackpool last month. Thatcher is leading a Tory assault on what she has described as "rigid pay policies" and calls instead for "responsible" collective bargaining.

The British public, obviously concerned about which major party can best cope with union demands, appears to favor Callaghan's position. In the past month Labor has climbed in the political polls from a seven-point deficit to a five-point advantage over the Tories. Callaghan is also 17 points ahead of Thatcher in personal popularity, a gain of six points in a single month. In a by-election last month in the marginal Scottish border district of Berwick and East Lothian, Labor managed to retain a seat that the Conservatives had strong hopes of winning.