Oh dear, oh dear - what a shambles. This should have been a spectacular week for William Hague. Here he is, eagerly awaiting the call to arms, the date for a general election in which his task is to unseat a Prime Minister he considers economical with the truth and whom he famously detests.
And here we have Tony Blair in a sea of troubles which, if not life threatening at present, should certainly caution a retiring government to take nothing for granted.
Mr Blair is only days away from re-enacting the scenes - the formal visit to Her Majesty, the announcement of the election date - that he was forced to postpone last month because of the foot-and-mouth crisis his government is widely held to have spectacularly mismanaged. Indeed, the suspicion persists that the crisis is conveniently set to disappear around June 7th, only because the ministry is fiddling the figures to suit the requirements of Mr Blair's election timetable.
After all the grandiose talk of a new field of dreams, Jack Straw heads a ministerial team tasked to rescue plans to rebuild Wembley Stadium - and, crucially, avoid a repeat of the Dome fiasco.
More seriously, the money men warn that the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, will not be able to sustain plans to increase spending by almost twice the rate of projected economic growth. The growing sense is that a second-term Labour government will ultimately have to choose - between increased "investment" in public services, and Mr Blair's no-tax-hike compact with Middle England.
Although they won't admit it this side of the election, New Labour's devolved settlement already begs the question of why Scotland should enjoy a disproportionate slice of the public purse, and a disproportionate share of Westminster seats.
Devolution to London meanwhile has the mayor taking the government to court over its plans for funding the London Underground - the Public Private Partnership which Mr Livingstone's American transport guru warns will endanger passenger safety.
With Mr Livingstone reportedly ready to campaign for Liberal Democrat candidates on the issue, the field is wide open for Tory exploitation of Labour's failure to rescue the capital's crumbling transport system after four years in power.
Mr Hague has certainly had the perfect opportunity to exploit the disillusionment of Londoners who battled the hazards of Tuesday's May Day protests and were spared the hassle of last night's threatened strike by London Underground workers with just hours to spare.
The anti-capitalists inevitably grabbed the headlines for Tuesday's day of action. However, wildcatting doctors downed their paperwork for the day in protest against a bureaucratic overload which denies them enough time with patients.
Foot-and-mouth. Worries about an economic downturn. Unresolved devolved dilemmas. The state of the trains. The state of the hospitals. The state of the national game. Oh yes, and the future of the nation itself. And, as if there weren't enough openings on the domestic front, Germany's leaders obliged Euro sceptics by detailing plans for the next stage of European government.
An otherwise disastrous opinion poll in yesterday's Sun - suggesting Labour is on course to increase its Commons majority - confirmed that on the question of Europe, if nothing much else, Mr Hague and the British people remain at one.
By only the narrowest of margins - 53 per cent to 47 - those questioned said they would vote in any referendum to remain within the EU. But nearly three out of four voters - 70 per cent - said they would vote against replacing sterling with the single currency.
Yet Mr Hague began the week besieged by questions about two virtual unknowns - Mr John Townend and Lord Taylor - and much of the rest explaining that racism has no part to play in his Conservative Party.
The net effect was to leave Mr Hague looking weak, pushed around by ill-disciplined colleagues - shadow cabinet members, Heath, Townend, Taylor, the Tory Reform Group, et al. All of them without doubt seem deadly serious about the party's internal race row - and few of them appear remotely serious about the task of electing a Conservative government in just five weeks' time.