These are difficult, some would say desperate, days for William Hague.
Despite "Black Christmas", the fall of Peter Mandelson, and a seeming epidemic of clay foot afflicting members of the cabinet ("Junket Jack" Cunningham being the latest), Tony Blair continues to fly high. His government will shortly enter its mid-term against a backdrop of record approval ratings. Tory hopes, fuelled by that early New Year poll shocker lopping seven points off Labour, have been cruelly dashed.
If anything, support for Labour appears to be up. Pollsters and pundits will wrestle with the margins of error. But two or three points are neither here nor there. The relentless message of the polls is that Mr Hague and the Tories are still languishing somewhere below 30 per cent - in real terms, nowhere.
Added to which the Conservative leader's one real claim to fame, his ability to get Mr Blair on the ropes at Question Time, and keep him there, has been badly undermined by a series of lacklustre performances.
It wasn't actually Mr Hague's fault that the disloyal Lord Cranborne stitched him up over Lords reform, so turning a planned rout of the government front bench into a humiliation for his own. But the perception that he did not know what was going on in his own party, and that he could not then decide how to respond, was deeply damaging. As Mr Hague should know, perception in politics can be as important as the reality.
Moreover, and this takes us into the more important issue of his strategic judgment, Mr Hague by common consent should not have been talking about the Lords that particular day. Oskar Lafontaine had just triggered panic inside Downing Street with his talk of European tax harmonisation, presenting the Tory leader with what looked like an open goal.
The goal looked similarly inviting just last Wednesday. The press gallery was packed for Mr Hague's first encounter with the Prime Minister since the Mandelson resignation. With all the revelations about rivalries and animosities at the heart of government, and Mr Blair reeling from the loss of his most trusted ally, Mr Hague could hardly fail to score.
Mr Mandelson, indeed, had set the ball up with his rather brash interpretation of the Britannia Building Society's decision not to pursue the question of his mortgage application. The former trade secretary proclaimed the decision "a clean bill of health" and, chiding the press for a rush to judgment, came close to implying that perhaps he need not have resigned after all.
It seemed obvious Mr Hague would ask Mr Blair if he agreed Mr Mandelson should have resigned, and why. Instead of which the Tory leader mixed it all together with the National Health Service and thoroughly lost the plot.
Tory insiders were privately despairing. And as if all this was not enough, Mr Hague suffers that other well-known political affliction, "friends" who conspire never to say precisely the right thing. Michael Portillo's cheery observation that young William hadn't quite mastered the television technique was unimportant of itself. But given the current mood among the press, and with the public still clearly wanting to hear nothing at all from the Tories, it hardly helped.
Mr Hague certainly does not need Tories feeding the suspicion that he is not up to it. There is already out there a strong disposition to write him off. Indeed Mr Hague's failure thus far to register any obvious impact with the voting public underlines the critical nature of the upcoming council, Scottish, Welsh and European elections. Some commentators, and some Tories, believe that if he fails to deliver convincing evidence of an emerging electoral recovery, he could be out of a job within the year.
That, it must be said, still looks unlikely. The new Tory rules make it still harder to displace the incumbent. Mr Portillo may harbour thoughts of the leadership but he remains, as yet, without a Commons seat. Moreover, Mr Hague is clearly committed to a stratagem for the longer term and need not be expected to go quietly.
That was evidenced by Tuesday night's big speech to the Centre for Policy Studies. For some of the aforementioned reasons alone, the reviews were always going to be mixed. They were also deservedly so. Certainly the speech was more compelling as an indictment of the Blair project than as a blueprint for what a Hague government would do. He says, or example, he will meet the West Lothian Question head-on but is less clear as to how he proposes to win Scots over to his brand of unionism.
However, there is a real sense of Labour nervousness about its rolling programme of constitutional reform. It is hardly accidental that Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles are going to spend long periods of this year in Scotland and Wales. And it is not just Tories who suspect Labour seized on devolution to provide a radical cutting edge while, in opposition, they clothed themselves in the traditional Conservative garb of fiscal rectitude and responsibility.
Mr Hague has to cope with the inevitability of devolution. But who can say the country will not turn to him if the experiment turns sour and actually does threaten the dismemberment of the kingdom?
His biggest gamble is over Europe, about which, he says, there is nothing inevitable at all. And Mr Blair presumably agrees there is as yet nothing inevitable about the British electorate's decision on scrapping the pound and joining the euro, else he might have opted to put the issue to the referendum test already.
The battle lines are clearly drawn. And on two counts at least Mr Hague deserves some plaudits. He is providing opposition. And he has ensured that, on the most important peacetime decision they will ever be called upon to make, the British people will be given a clear choice.