"It looks like a total fiasco and it's worse than it appears." That was the verdict of one Conservative insider yesterday as he surveyed the press fallout from Wednesday's manoeuvre by Mr Hague. A manoeuvre intended to embarrass Mr Blair resulted instead in a split within the Conservative Party, Mr Hague's likely loss of his hereditary peers as an effective opposition to House of Lords reform and, inevitably, fresh speculation about Mr Hague's leadership.
The Sun - which depicted Mr Hague as the leader of a Dead Parrot Party during the Conservative conference - yesterday had him "on the ropes" after his humiliating discovery in front of MPs in the Commons chamber that Lord Cranborne had "betrayed him" by doing a secret deal with Mr Blair to keep some hereditary peers during the transitional stage to total Lords reform.
It was possible to feel more than a little sorry for Mr Hague, given the "noble" Lord Cranborne's own admission that he had behaved "quite outrageously" and deserved to be sacked. Indeed, the paper's political editor described his action as "self-interested cowardice" by someone "who stood to gain only a temporary reprieve for the bluebloods he led".
In that charitable tone, the Guardian noted "the lucklessness" of Mr Hague as a continuing theme of British politics - before concluding that he had riven his party on the issue likely to dominate in the coming year and again, as with the Euro, shown himself on a "kamikaze mission . . . in which almost every strategic judgment he makes is wrong".
Mournful that a member of the illustrious Cecil family had been sacked, the Daily Telegraph found itself torn - deciding Lord Cran borne's conduct, "though devious in form, was based on sincere principle" - before concluding that Mr Blair's offer was "a trap" which would have obliged the Tories to accept the Prime Minister's plan for stage one reform of the Lords without defining his proposed stage two.
Unhappily for Mr Hague, the London Times - like the Conservative insider - concluded that that was now precisely what their Lordships would do. Backing the Cranborne view that the deal would have prevented Mr Blair from dragging his feet on the second stage, and have bolstered the case for an independent element in a reformed second chamber, the paper notes: "Mr Hague declared war - and quickly found how limited is his room for manoeuvre. His peers want the Cranborne deal.
"They are in a strong enough position - even without the leadership of the wily heir to the Cecils - to make sure they get it."