At Conservative Central Office just now they must be holding their heads in despair. In his Commons office, William Hague is probably wondering how it could have gone so wrong, so quickly and so spectacularly.
The Tories have got themselves into a horrible mess over the race for mayor of London. As a pale imitation of Labour's instinct to control, their attempts to produce a worthy opponent for "Red Ken", "Dobbo" and Ms Jackson have made the party a laughing stock in London, as first they ignored Lord Archer's tenuous grasp on the truth and on Monday rejected the "Essex Boadicea", Mrs Teresa Gorman.
The colourful Mrs Gorman - one might even go so far as to describe her as "fragrant" in the Lady Archer sense of the word - was of course a late entry into the Tory contest for its nomination as candidate for mayor of London.
It was no wonder that party officials welcomed the arrival of "a high profile national politician into the field" when Mrs Gorman submitted her entry form to the London executive just in time for the close of nominations on Monday. Lord Archer may have been banished to his house in Cambridgeshire to write sorry letters and cancel his annual Krug champagne and shepherd's pie Christmas party, but the former transport minister, Mr Steven Norris, smarting over the party's refusal to invite him to stand as a candidate and leaving him to a public battle with eight other nominees, has barely raised the pulse of London Tories.
The rejection of Mrs Gorman's candidacy, after a secret meeting of the London executive on Monday night, was a surprise and a disappointment, she told reporters, but was simply the reality of too many nominations, according to the executive. As an exercise in preventing further embarrassment for the party, the executive acted swiftly where the leadership had previously failed with Lord Archer.
Not that the executive would admit as much. The chairman of the party's London region, Mr Toby Vincent, assured reporters there were just too many nominations for Mrs Gorman to go forward to the next round and he said nothing more. And from Central Office there was silence, no one was talking about Mrs Gorman's colourful past or her record on opposing the party on the EU in the 1970s and 1980s.
Behind closed doors, Mrs Gorman was judged by the London executive to be too difficult to handle by virtue of her reputation as a maverick right-winger, one of John Major's "bastards" who lost the party whip over her opposition to the Tory European policy. There is no doubt that the Billericay MP has found support on the right wing of the party during the Hague era, but that position may have been too extreme for the party leader as he attempts to impose his control over his MPs in the Commons.
Furthermore, Mrs Gorman stood against the party as a Eurosceptic candidate in Streatham, south London, in 1974 and the leadership hasn't forgiven that rebellion, even if, as the press has pointed out, it has forgiven the rebellions of MPs such as John Redwood.
The chairman of Labour in London, Mr Jim Fitzpatrick, had his own theory about the reasons for Mrs Gorman's omission from the list of mayoral candidates when he heard about the Tories' decision. It was evidence of incompetence and confusion at the heart of a party reeling from the embarrassment of backing Lord Archer only to see the whole process collapse around their ears. Mr Fitzpatrick almost purred with delight when he said: "I wonder whether it has anything to do with Mrs Gorman describing William Hague as a `pre-pubescent marshmallow, and he's in love with himself'."
Certainly Labour would have relished Mrs Gorman's entry into the mayoral race as a Tory version of "Red Ken", igniting the battle for the hearts of London voters and taking the heat off their own rebel into the bargain. But if Mr Frank Dobson is depressed, as some observers have suggested this week, and Mr Ken Livingstone is preparing to stand as an Independent if he is not selected as Labour's candidate next year, Mr Blair is hardly sitting on a safe bet. Striking Mrs Gorman from the list of candidates may have saved the Tories from embarrassment in the long term, but who can say that the colourful and resourceful Billericay MP might not decide to stand as an Independent and blow the whole race wide open?