"Just tell William not to go to the cricket on Friday."
There is still a bitter memory of John Major turning his back on the party just when many members felt they needed him most. Now William Hague has done it again - and this time, it looks as if he was ready all along to desert his loyal followers.
"Such was the defeat, and he was so wounded, there was no point in prolonging the agony," said one close friend.
One shadow cabinet minister sympathised: "I would have urged him to delay. But he had carried huge burden with an unfailingly positive attitude for so long, you can't blame him for going quickly."
William Hague is a notoriously private politician, a controller, an organiser. In the months running up to the campaign, as his party flat-lined in the polls, he began to develop a sliding scale of what was survivable, the number of seats he must win to meet his own personal target. It was almost certainly the seemingly modest ambition to gain about 30 seats.
"The process of decision emerged. He worked it out in his own mind," said the friend. And, having so publicly set out his political convictions, he could not stay if the voters rejected them.
Painfully clear
He went into the campaign knowing that he could only reasonably stay on if his own brand of Conservativism was proved to be, if not a winner, then at least saleable. As Thursday night wore on, it became painfully clear it was not.
"Despite that stronger base and the diminishing enthusiasm for New Labour," Mr Hague said as he announced his decision to resign from the steps of Conservative central office, "we have not been able to persuade a majority or anything approaching a majority, that we are yet the alternative government that they need.
"Nor have I been able to persuade sufficient numbers that I am their alternative prime minister. I believe strongly, passionately, in everything I've fought for, but it's also vital for leaders to listen and parties to change."
The target was a very private affair. He would not reveal even to close aides such as Danny Finkelstein - another victim of Thursday's wipeout - what the bottom line was.
But by late Thursday night, a tiny handful of his intimates knew. In the early hours of Friday morning, the party chairman Michael Ancram realised that the result was going to be in his leader's private exit zone.
Asked directly if Mr Hague should stay, the normally fluent Ancram hesitated. "I am sure William is looking at these disappointing results very carefully," he finally managed.
And a sense of impending release ex plains his apparently relentless cheerfulness on the campaign trail. For a fortnight he told the journalists on the campaign bus that the polls were wrong. He seemed - as many workers on the ground did too - to be entirely confident that his target was within reach.
His only visible wobble came in the week before the end, when he was taken to pieces by Jeremy Paxman in a Newsnight interview. The debater who so regularly floored Tony Blair in the Commons was on the ropes, seemingly unable to fight back. For the next 24 hours he looked pale and shaken.
But by Monday night, flying back after the Perth rally with accompanying journalists for the last time, he was on top form - buoyant, confident, teasing the photographers and revealing that he'd been running with his closest aide, Olympic runner Seb Coe. "He's better at running, but I'm better at judo," he joked.
Perhaps his wife Ffion's mood was even more of a giveaway. "She skipped down the plane," one reporter said. "She who barely smiled was suddenly demob happy."
By early yesterday Iain Duncan Smith and Ann Widdecombe, both potential leadership candidates, had already seen Mr Hague and promised him their support if he wanted to stay on, at least until it was clear whether a referendum on the euro was on the horizon.
But the Tory leader was adamant. "His logic was irrefutable," one person who saw him said later. "He was clear that if you've led the party for four years and it ended up where it began - well, you can't stay on, can you?"
His options were anyway strictly limited. A 'back me or sack me' strategy had been widely canvassed. Its disadvantage - as John Major found when he tried it in 1995 - is that it doesn't flush out all possible contenders. Michael Portillo and Peter Lilley were no more resigned to the Major premiership after he had been restored to the party leadership than they had been before.
There is also the question of degrees of victory. Major's was expertly spun but the fact remained that a significant minority - 89 - of his MPs did not support him. Mrs Thatcher's cabinet finally convinced her that though she could win, she would be permanently disabled by the number against her. Mr Hague knew that if he challenged his opponents, he would almost certainly emerge damaged.
Going so swiftly will upset party workers. But, as one key player observed, the prolonged timetable for the campaign does give potential participants an opportunity to explore what went wrong - and what needs to be done to put it right.
And maybe Mr Hague believes he will be back. One Oxford contemporary recalled his passion for Winston Churchill yesterday. "I wonder if he doesn't see himself going through his own wilderness years - and returning at some point in glory."
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Hague: I quit
Comment and analysis
George Monbiot: Labour's victory rings hollow
Austen Chamberlain: history's first Hague
