Hague defensive on euro

Hague: Getting the youngsters to play ball

		By Mark Mardell BBC News political correspondent

Somebody will soon write that it was the Tories' Wobbly Wednesday.

It wasn't.

The really interesting thing was all those silent senior Conservatives.

If you want to hear anything from them you have to be very quiet. Only then can you hear them measuring out as much rope as Mr Hague feels he needs.

Mr Hague had just linked his fate and the party's fate with the fate of the pound

The Conservatives have had to, to put it very politely, refine their strategy.

Last Friday William Hague said this election was the last chance to save the pound. This worried some Conservatives who very much wanted to save the pound but very much fear they will not win the election.

Mr Hague had just linked his fate and the party's fate with the fate of the pound.

This very much amused their opponents who realised at once that if Mr Hague was about two steps away from falling down a big hole and taking all the enemies of the euro with him.

Michael Portillo: Last chance for a fair vote on the euro

(In the spirit of truth, justice and the British way I have to admit, not believing that a clever man could be so daft, I wrote a piece here suggesting he might have a cunning strategy, that he was playing not roulette but poker. I was wrong. I now think it WAS roulette, the Russian variety, and it's still going on.)

The next day Mr Hague suggested a referendum could not be won. Mr Portillo suggested it could.

Referendum 'rigged'

Mr Hague back-tracked - he would fight "tooth and nail" in a real referendum but it would be rigged.

Finally Mr Portillo said the election was the last chance for a "fair vote" on the euro because the referendum would be rigged.

So at last a measure of harmony was achieved.

But at the price of a few difficult interviews and shouted questions at news conferences that the Conservatives could well have done without.

And I imagine, but don't know, a few tense scenes at Conservative central office.

Those on the Hague tour bus have been reporting all along that he's been ebullient in the face of adversity, unbattered, unbowed.

Defensive note

But now they say the mood has changed, he's gone flat and seems defensive.

It's probably nothing much to do with the referendum debacle and everything to do with throwing his all into a ferocious, brave and determined personal campaign to push the euro to the very top of the political agenda.

And winning. For days the euro dominated the news agenda. And that followed another Conservative favourite - tax - leading the news for a few days.

Why so glum, then ? The polls shifted for the first time... away from him.

All that effort, all that graft, all that success in agenda-setting terms and nothing to show for it.

His woes might be compounded by a former junior minister, Ian Taylor, well-known for his enthusiasm for Europe and distaste for Mr Hague's policy saying that highlighting "save the pound" was "folly".

It's not interesting he thinks this, only that he's chosen to say it now.

In the last election Conservatives were atrociously undisciplined saying what they thought, when they felt like it.

Sound of silence

This time its very different. But don't mistake the silence for a new spirit of loyalty.

And each has good reasons.

Michael Heseltine is fishing in Russia.

Ken Clarke is campaigning hard in his own seat on local issues.

Mr Patten I believe is kept very busy in Brussels.

If the Conservatives don't win, no senior figure wants his loose tongue, his disloyalty, the way he gave an interview during an election to be blamed for the scale of defeat.

This is as true of those in the shadow cabinet as those outside.

The unspoken agreement is that if they win victory will be Mr Hague's. But if they lose it will be Mr Hague's defeat.

No alibis. No excuses.

They want the whole bucket tipped over his head. Every last drop. Leadership is indeed a lonely business.