Thatcher at New Low in Opinion Poll : Great Britain: The furor over the top treasury official’s resignation heightens criticism of the prime minister’s leadership style.

LONDON —  Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, her government rocked by the resignation of her top treasury official, sank today to the worst ratings of her decade in power.

One sounding showed her the most unpopular leader since polling began here.

“She cannot afford many more mishaps,” said Norman Tebbit, former chairman of the governing Conservative Party who helped mastermind Thatcher’s third successive election victory in 1987.

In a National Opinion Poll sounding, Thatcher hit the lowest popularity rating for any prime minister since polling started in Britain 50 years ago.

Only 24% of a sample of 935 voters questioned said they were satisfied with her performance and 61% blamed her for Thursday’s sudden resignation of Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson.

He said he could not continue in the 22-member Cabinet so long as Thatcher retained a personal economic adviser, Sir Alan Walters, who opposes having Britain fully join the European Monetary System that links key European currencies. Walters then also resigned.

Thatcher is lukewarm toward membership of the system’s currency-stabilizing exchange rate mechanism while Lawson and Deputy Prime Minister Geoffrey Howe favor it. She fired Howe as foreign secretary last June.

Tebbit, one of Thatcher’s closest political associates, described the latest forced Cabinet shuffle as “an appalling political muddle.’

“She should remember it is dangerous for a captain to appear semidetached from the team,” Tebbit wrote in London’s Evening Standard.

The furor has heightened criticism of Thatcher’s style as bossy, hectoring and intolerant of opposing views in the Cabinet.

The National Opinion Poll, published in a London newspaper, The Independent, was taken by telephone in the three days after Lawson quit and the British media reported the government in crisis.

Thatcher already held the unpopularity record when she scored a 25% satisfied rating in Gallup and Market Opinion and Research International polls in 1981 when the effects of her tight-money policies sent unemployment soaring.

Labor Party Prime Minister Harold Wilson held the previous unpopularity record of 27% satisfied in a 1968 Gallup sounding.

The National Opinion Poll showed 62% of those questioned said they were dissatisfied with Thatcher. Fourteen percent had no opinion.

A Harris Poll for the BBC-TV current affairs program “Panorama” being screened tonight showed the Conservatives 13 points behind the socialist Labor Party. Fifty-two percent of those questioned said Thatcher should resign.