Listening to Margaret Beckett on the Today programme this morning was a painful experience. The foreign secretary sounded by turns impatient, petulant and downright annoyed with the lines of questioning. Asked whether Israel had her "blessing" to carry on bombing after the deaths of 60 people at Qana, she replied: "Oh - pack it in."
John Reid can sometimes get away with admonishing a Today interviewer by accusing them of not taking the issue at hand seriously enough. Mrs Beckett couldn't, because James Naughtie was accusing her of precisely that.
She was already on the back foot after he picked up on her use of the word "fuss". "A fuss, Mrs Beckett, a fuss?"
"I didn't say a fuss, did I?"
"Yes, you did. We're talking about the deaths of 60 people ..."
And so it went on: hedging, stalling, and concluding unhappily that the Qana deaths were "inevitable".
The foreign secretary is desperately trying to avoid opening up the slightest difference between Tony Blair's position and her own.
Jack Straw's intervention at the weekend scarcely helped. Mr Straw was frequently criticised for toeing the Blair-Bush line on foreign policy, but he did enjoy a rapport with Condoleezza Rice that helped to sustain the impression that Britain enjoyed some influence in Washington.
Mrs Beckett lacks even that. She can still fill air with the old rhetorical tricks - variations on "that's what we want to do, we have been doing, we are doing, and we intend to continue to do ..." - but she is acutely aware that she can do nothing more than act as the PM's spokeswoman on the war in the Middle East.
She is not going to the Middle East. She is probably not going to Washington. She is manning the phones at the Foreign Office, assuring an increasingly disbelieving public that Britain alone can persuade Syria, Iran and Israel to see sense.
And unless Mr Blair postpones his departure for the Caribbean, that's exactly what she will carry on doing in August.
After all, no one is going to let John Prescott explain the complexities of UN diplomacy and the relationship between Syria and Hizbullah on live radio.
That longed-for caravanning holiday in France looks further and further off.
