Premiership of Margaret Thatcher the June 1983 general election, the Conservatives won 42.4% of the vote, the Labour Party 27.6% and the Alliance 25.4% of the vote. Though the gap between Labour and the Alliance was narrow in terms of votes, the Alliance vote was scattered and they won only a fraction of the seats that Labour held, with its concentrated base. The Conservatives' share of the vote fell slightly (1.5%) since 1979. Labour's vote had fallen by far more (9.3%) and the Conservatives now had an overall majority of 144 MPs. Thatcher was Prime Minister during what "The Guardian" described as "the worst
Premiership of Margaret Thatcher her opposition to greater economic integration into the European Community. She also alienated many Conservative voters and Members of Parliament with the imposition of the local poll tax. As her support fell away, she was challenged for the party leadership and persuaded by her Cabinet to withdraw from the second round of voting, ending her eleven-year tenure as Prime Minister. Though she remains a domestically polarising figure, historians and political scientists generally rank Thatcher as an above-average Prime Minister. Biographer John Campbell reports that in July 1978 when asked by a Labour MP in Commons what she meant by socialism: