THERE are still Tory loyalists out there. I met some yesterday, the morning after Mr Major had divined the "defining issue" on the doorsteps and Mr Blair the "defining moment" of the campaign.
"Your lot look a complete shambles," I ventured to one defending MP. Back came the instant confirmation: "My dear boy, I'm afraid I can offer nothing to challenge that impression." The Tory in question is personally cheerful. He's got a big majority and anticipates a relatively safe passage back to the Commons, but he fully expects to be sitting on the Opposition benches.
Another in similar circumstances told me: "Things are fine in my neck of the woods, pity about the rest of the country. In the west country - where, according to Tory sources, public concern about Europe was a factor in Wednesday's dramatic prime ministerial appeal to party and nation - I find a retiring MP.
He has been campaigning on behalf of his successor, but he's privately spitting blood. "There was barely a mention of Europe at his selection meeting, but now he's in the local paper as a Euro rebel and he hasn't even been elected yet. I call that disloyal."
This guy proved a shrewd source at times of Conservative difficulty (were there every any other?) in the last parliament. He thought Mr Major was superb on Wednesday and he hoped he detected something of a leadership plan. It looked like good old fashioned crisis management to most of us.
A plan? "Central Office knew these individual declarations were coming. After all, they have a team of people helping candidates finesse their election addresses. I wonder if they decided there would come a moment when John Major would have to stake out his position and turn the tables on Tony Blair in the process."
There is an echo here of the Central Office line. Again yesterday, sources insisted that the prime minister had turned a difficult situation to positive advantage. One said: "He spent 48 hours in the west country and found a lot of people didn't understand his position or were anxious about Europe. Now he's setting out our position very firmly against a federal Europe, setting down terms for the Amsterdam summit and, you could argue, looking very statesmanlike."
Less statesmanlike but of more practical importance was his calculation that the anti federal message "might prove important in the marginals, might persuade some waverers back to the fold where they're currently thinking of backing the Referendum Party".
This would be music to the ears of that retiring MP. Like many other Tories, he believes Tony Blair is vulnerable on the European issue - on the Social Chapter, the national veto, the extension of qualified majority voting.
But even if there was a plan, I asked him, could it conceivably work and save the election? "Oh no," he replied: "I think it's too late for that, although I don't think Blair will win by a landslide."
Maybe the sources are right. Perhaps the prime minister's warnings about the EU summit might have some marginal benefit for individual candidates, but what's new? He has consistently cast Mr Blair as the federalists' friend, himself their implacable opponent. On a single currency, Mr Major's party is his implacable foe.
By separate routes, the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph yesterday reached that same conclusion. The Guardian's sympathetic editorial observed: "The disabling weakness of Mr Major's position is that he is now conclusively unable to carry his government's policy out in practice."
From the house journal of Euroscepticism a celebration of Conservative honesty and an effective dismissal of Mr Major's vow that the people, not he, would take the final decision: "As a result of the ructions of the past few days, we can be sure that a re elected Conservative government would not put the question to the country. Its backbenchers would not allow it to."
Tony Blair, carefully declining to open ground between himself and Mr Major on the issue, kept to his leadership theme. Mocking the prime minister's "negotiate and decide" policy, the Labour leader declared: "John Major may negotiate if he is re elected, but his party will decide. That is the problem, isn't it."
Last night, critics of the Conservative leadership again mocked its apparent inability to remain decided on anything about Europe tore two consecutive days. The Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke, was caught unawares by Mr Major's offer of a "possible" free vote for MPs if and when they reach the moment of decision on the currency.
Barely had Michael Heseltine censured the media for going over the top about the "possibility" of something that might happen at some point in the distant future, than Mr Major had turned it into a promise, the logical consequence of his commitment to a referendum.
The Euro sceptics were delighted not to mention Labour and the Liberal Democrats.