Speculation about Mr Michael Portillo's possible withdrawal from front-line British politics underlined the sense of Conservative Party disarray last night, amid reports that Labour might be planning to hold a general election as early as next April.
The shadow chancellor tried to quell mounting media excitement, insisting he was not planning to quit. "No, I'm not, I'm going to stay in politics," he told reporters outside his London home: "You really shouldn't pay attention to gossip."
However, Mr Portillo had triggered the media frenzy himself by way of a statement to the Daily Telegraph seeming to rule himself out as a future Tory leader, even if the Conservatives lose the next election. Mr Portillo told the paper he had "no ambition to be leader of the Conservative Party", and later insisted: "I have been saying that for years. It's about time someone believed me."
However, Mr Portillo's carefully worded statement - saying he wanted to continue to help the shadow cabinet beat Labour and looked forward to serving as a member of the next government - was taken to leave open the possibility that he would leave the front bench should Mr William Hague be defeated.
Mr Portillo has been under steady fire from Conservative traditionalists for the more compassionate and "inclusive" Conservatism he has espoused since his general election defeat in 1997.
His insistence that the Conservative Party should embrace ethnic and sexual minorities, coupled with revelations about his earlier private life, has infuriated the Thatcherite right. Lady Thatcher herself is reported to have said the new "touchy-feely" Portillo, once her anointed successor, had become "very confused".
An editorial in last night's London Evening Standard saw his statement in the Telegraph as a "public surrender" to those "less sensitive front-benchers, not to mention their high priestess" who had been appalled by the spectacle of the returning Mr Portillo "anguishing about the meaning of life, politics and Toryism".
Worryingly for Mr Hague, the paper concluded: "The message from the Conservative Party, highlighted by Mr Portillo's public surrender . . . seems unequivocal and chilling: there is no room at the summit of the party, and not much at the grassroots, for any but steely Europhobics who embrace the credo of the right."