Poor old William. Things, it seems, can only go from bad to worse for the Tory leader.
He and Ffion gave a good impression of enjoying themselves inside Mr Tony's Millennium Dome on the big night - though Simply Red is hardly their idea of a good time. Maybe they were privately enjoying the fact that Queen Elizabeth's conclusion that she had nothing to add to her Christmas Day message denied the great leader the opportunity to take centre stage - so confining his emoting to the midnight rendition of Auld Lang Syne.
Perhaps (with much of the rest of the country) they were sniggering at the discomfiture of the great and good, forced to queue for hours on end, only to discover that they'd missed the food and the free bar, and would have to queue again another time if they really wanted to sample the wonders of the Dome.
More likely the Conservative leader and his wife were simply savouring their imminent escape. For after the icy wastes of once-Tory Britain, the dangerous snows of Montana can have held few terrors. Yet even as they packed their bags, Lord Geoffrey Howe was preparing to detonate a cracker of his own - this time with William himself pinned to the centre of the Catherine Wheel.
Denis Healey once famously likened an attack from Geoffrey Howe to being "savaged by a dead sheep". But the former Tory chancellor is better-secured in history as a master of the ruinous resignation. He it was who triggered the events which ultimately led to Margaret Hilda's brutal ejection from Downing Street. After her Falklands victory, Lord Howe recalled, Mrs Thatcher's powers became for a time literally magnetic. Later, of course, "her will had become positively fissiparous: ministers were spinning off like sparks from a Catherine Wheel".
Noting Hague's loss of his deputy in the Commons and his Leader in the Lords in the past 12 months (and with passing reference to Shaun Woodward's pre-Christmas defection ) Lord Howe declared: "Mr Hague thus risks finding himself at the Catherine Wheel stage, without having enjoyed any magnetic interlude on the way."
The reaction of the loyalists was as predictable as they found this latest blast from the past. After Ken Clarke, John Major and (the mayoral hopeful) Steve Norris, it seemed of a piece that the Europhile Lord Howe should join the chorus warning against a Tory "lurch to the right" and a loss of "electability" in the process. And it is hard not to have some sympathy with the present management at Central Office.
If Mr Woodward's heart really is with New Labour, why shouldn't he fight a by-election to satisfy himself that the electors of Witney share his affections? Isn't this precisely the kind of off-stage message Mr Major found so debilitating when he was hanging on to power? Isn't it a bit rich for him and Mr Clarke, who presumably take some responsibility for leading the party to electoral disaster in 1997, to be telling Mr Hague how not to do it?
Moreover, Tory loyalists rage, the "lurch to the right" is itself a New Labour confection. Mr Clarke was an enthusiastic member of a fairly right-wing Thatcherite government (as were Mr Major and Sir Geoffrey) - the perceived shift now is the result of New Labour's wholesale occupation of traditional Tory territory. And if, as is probably the case, this is all code for opposition to Mr Hague's opposition to the single currency - where's the benefit in abandoning the one policy he has which chimes with the great British public?
The euro battle has the capacity to transform the British political landscape and put the Tories back in contention. But it is a battle for the next parliament. For the remainder of this one, Mr Hague has to contend with the perception (fuelled by the grandees) that he is not in contention for power in an election perhaps little more than a year away - and reassure his backbenchers that the result, when it comes, will be measurably better than last time.
On the cold, bitter morning of May 2nd 1997, it would have seemed inconceivable that things could actually get worse. But as they await Mr Portillo's return to the front line, few Tories would claim even that degree of assurance now.