He is young, clever, state educated; he uses the NHS; he is classless; he comes from the centre-right, the centre of gravity of his party; he is, mostly, an impressive parliamentarian. And yet, curiously, Mr Hague contrives to be a man who is less than the sum of his parts.What is even worse for Mr Hague is that he is beginning to look very small fry next to Tony Blair, now being presented as the effective leader of the free world.This may, in fact, be part of the trouble. The Tories are becoming obsessed with the charisma gap between Hague and Blair They are anxious students of the rebuilding of Labour But they are learning the wrong lessons. They are mesmerised by the mythology of spin at the expense, even, of procedural basics.In a speech last night Mr Hague again attempted to lend clarity to a muddled message.

But, as Michael Portillo has pointed out, “the spoken word has only a limited capacity to convince. It has to be accompanied by symbolic actions.” Ditching Thatcherism on its birthday may have been a symbolic act; if so, it was the wrong one, as anyone with the slightest political nous could have pointed out in advance. Mr Portillo again: “You cannot ditch policies that succeeded so convincingly that they were adopted by your opponents.”The Scottish, Welsh and local elections are a crucial test of Mr Hague’s leadership He may be challenged if his party fares badly But there is no obvious replacement. Mr Clarke would reconnect the Tories with the voters, but at the expense of even bigger splits Mr Maude has not lived up to his promise Mr Portillo is unavailable.

And Miss Widdecombe might be too radical a shift, even for desperate Tories. If Mr Hague really is the best leader the Tories have got, then for him – and for his ill- fated spin doctor Amanda Platell – the worst weeks are yet to come.. A FEW weeks ago, William Hague gave a speech to one of those myriad party bodies that leaders of the Opposition must address, while Prime Ministers busily bestride the world. It may have been the Wiltshire and North Hampshire Regional Association of Conservative Women annual Stanley Baldwin lecture in Devizes (“Last year we had Virginia Bottomley, so we are going up in the world!”), but I forget. This, edited of extraneous and irrelevant material, is what Mr Hague said: “Now our party can be free Our party can choose to be free to face the future We must choose to be free. Free of old structures, free of old habits, free of old thinking We have to be free For the sake of the British people, we have to be free Free to face the future. Breaking free means being prepared to change our policies.
“Ours will be a party that has broken free And to do that we have to be free We’re going to break free Break free by changing our agenda Break free by changing our policies.

Break free by changing our approach and our language.”Well, no one can say they haven’t been warned. Mr Blair wants to be a beacon, and Mr Hague wishes to be free. Indeed, there are some in his party who, after the last week, now want their leader to be almost completely unencumbered. They know that what William Hague wants to be free of are some of the things that they most like.Essentially, it is all to do with the state. Lefties, even designer ones, are generally in favour of lots of state. They stress collective provision against private provision in education and health. Their first priority is not to return to the individual what he or she has earned by the sweat of his or her own brow, but to sequester it so as to scatter it around for the benefit of those less provident.