THE GOVERNOR of Hong Kong, Mr Chris Patten, once considered a future leader of the Conservative Party, was playing tennis yesterday morning as the results came in on CNN confirming a Tory rout. A cry of "Oh No!" heard from the tennis court was, a spokesman said, a response to a bad shot rather than the news from Britain.
The result of the election, which meant that a Labour rather than a Conservative government will preside over the final days of the last major British colony, could have signalled the start of a political comeback for the former MP, who guided the Tory Party to success in 1992, only to lose his seat in Bath.
There was a theory that Mr Major might have been prepared to hang on to the leadership long enough for Mr Patten to return in triumph to Britain as a champion of democracy in Hong Kong on July 1st, stand in the first convenient by election, and take over the reins of the party.
But with the resignation of Mr Major as leader of the Conservative Party two months before Mr Patten leaves Hong Kong, it is much harder for him to get from A to B.
Yesterday, as he has always done, Mr Patten refused to answer questions about his political ambitions. In an interview in December, he told The Irish Times, when asked if wanted to become British Prime Minister some time in the future, that of course he did, and that he also wanted to play tennis at Wimbledon, but that neither was likely to happen.
For the Chinese government, the Labour victory removes from office the party with which it negotiated the Joint Declaration in 1984 under which China resumes sovereignty over the territory at midnight on June 30th this year, and with which it has squabbled for 13 years over the terms of the transfer.
Mr Patten is unpopular in Beijing for his electoral reforms and changes in civil liberties legislation in Hong Kong, which the Chinese government viewed as attempts to change the rules in the dying days of colonial rule and to undermine the Chinese system from within. Though a Labour government in London could replace Mr Patten, who was given the job by Mr Major as compensation for the loss of his constituency, this would leave the new Prime Minister, Mr Blair, open to charges of appeasing Beijing.
The Chinese government in Beijing - where government offices are closed for the May Day holiday will be pleased at the result, of the British election, favouring as it does parties identified with the left, however tenuously. And where it tended to marginalise Mr Patten in recent weeks, China will now treat the last colonial governor of Hong Kong more than ever as a lame duck administrator.
Both Mr Patten and the Chef Executive designate of Hong Kong, Mr Tung Chee-hwa, along with the leaders of most Asian nations, sent congratulations to Mr Blair. Otherwise, Hong Kong was unfazed by the result.
"I don't think we are disappointed or elated either way," said Mr Henry Tang, head of the Hong Kong Federation of Industry. Mr Ted Thomas, head of a campaign to boost Hong Kong's image, said it was more important to have good relations with the US than with Britain.