Does William Hague matter? He has led the rump of the Tory party (164 MPs) for a year. The news of his recent reshuffle was either third or fourth in the running order of both ITN and BBC News. Gazza came top.

Fate has dealt Hague a poor hand with only an occasional Knave in his pack. Ken Clarke has gone to the City, as has Douglas Hurd. Michael Heseltine is devoting his time to his business and his arboretum. Chris Patten is to come to Ireland to oversee the reform of the RUC. Only the sassy figure of Ann Widdecombe, the woman who destroyed the unctuous Michael Howard, adds excitement to the new Opposition bench.

Hague has a sea of troubles - a depleted party that suffered the worst defeat of the century, but he also has to compete with Tony Blair. Love him or loath him, Blair has assumed an almost presidential mantle; in fact, it might be claimed that after the death of Princess Diana, "the People's Princess", Blair did much to save the monarchy in Britain. Hague was wrong-footed and failed to give proper tongue to the extraordinary outpouring of grief that followed Diana's unhappy accident. (This was no "plot" - M16 would not be up to it).

Tony Blair is an attractive man - I use the word in its American sense - who comes over either on the telly or in the flesh as charming and honest. He has obliged Labour to come of age, for "socialism", like the Soviet Union, is dead. When comparing the performance of the two men, Blair and Hague, it is only rarely, if at all, that Hague has managed to lay a glove on him. Hague, or "Just William" as he is known to those Tories who voted for Kenneth Clarke, is as flat as the plain of York, a balding and unexciting young man with no political magic. His voice grates, and his youth has nothing in common with Camelot. Why then was he picked as leader?

The Tory party lost the election last year for two main reasons: it has been in power for 18 years; and it was clearly split down the middle over Europe. John Major lacked authority and the so-called Eurosceptics were permitted to run riot. The British electorate does not warm to a divided party. The rump of survivors, and we should not forget that besides the defeated MPs many of the wiser heads had retired from politics, was made up of right-wingers who could not countenance Clarke because of his pro-European views. Heseltine's angina had removed him from the field. Hague was chosen because he was not Michael Howard, Peter Lilley or Stephen Dorrell, while "El Caudilo" - that is Michael Portillo - had gone down to a surprise defeat at the election. We gambled on youth, so far without success. Hague, who is 36, is placed in an almost impossible position. He has to make his own name while, at the same time, leading his party back from the abyss: "Events" may come to his rescue; Blair might stumble. It was Harold Macmillan who said when asked what he feared most about being prime minister, "Events, dear boy, events."

But, so far events have not worked in Hague's, but Blair's favour. He might even have brought peace to "poor mad Ireland" (the line is Yeats's). He has managed to give the impression of being on good terms with Europe, without committing himself to an early entry into the common currency. I have already mentioned his skill at the time of Diana's death.

THE truth is that Blair presides over a centre party, free of ideology and has succeeded in gaining the confidence of the British people. When one reads the polls and sees that more "Tory voters" approve of Blair than they do of Hague, it is little wonder that many Tories, however defined, are on the verge of despair.

For as long as Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, keeps the rates of direct taxation at the level that Kenneth Clarke left them last year, the middle classes will have no incentive to rejoin the Tory party, let alone vote for it. Political parties are sustained by "interests", which is why the Social Democrats eventually failed. They stood neither for capital or labour. Today's Tory party can rely upon three interests; those who ride to hounds, disillusioned farmers, and those who believe in copulation before matrimony. I will concede that the last of the three "interests" is considerably larger than the other two.

Sir Julian Critchley was a Tory MP for 31 years. He retired in 1997, owing to ill health.