William Hague really needs to keep away from baseball caps

After his stint as Tory leader, William Hague ruled himself out of ever seeking the job again. This wasn’t solely based on the fact that his four years trying to revive a discredited rabble can’t have been a laugh riot. He later cited his own support for Jeffrey Archer’s mayoral candidacy as evidence of a lack of judgment which would make him an unsuitable Prime Minister. 

And Hague was right – he occasionally loses the plot and screws up. He did it by sharing digs with an openly (ravingly?) homosexual Tory MP. He did it when he made himself look ridiculous by wearing a baseball cap at a theme park (the cringe-making political equivalent at that time of a policeman dancing with black revelers at the Notting Hill Carnival). He did it when imagined a semi-deranged fantasist might be a good bet to run one of the world’s great cities. He did it when he tried to make himself look all manly with farcical claims about how many pints he downed when delivering beer to pubs in his youth. He did it – spectacularly – when he decided to share hotel rooms with a good-looking young maie aide (and allowing himself to be photographed in hilariously gay mufti with the same young man, who was similarly attired). 

And now he really has blown it (as it were). Perhaps his latest act of folly was brought on by losing yet another child (it’s hard to imagine anything worse). Or maybe because it’s intolerable for a blunt state school-educated Yorkshireman to continually have his masculinity brought into question. Or because there could be nothing more hurtful or insulting than the implication that one’s marriage is a sham. Or because Cameron comprehensively stole his thunder by crashing around the world insulting Pakistan and Israel, when that’s obviously the Foreign Secretary’s job. 

Whatever the cause, any last remaining hope his political fans (including myself) might have harboured of him one day becoming a proper right-wing Tory PM just exited stage left. And all because he couldn’t shrug off rumours of which the vast majority of the electorate were entirely unaware. 

I have no idea whether William Hague has homosexual tendencies. I’m inclined to take him at his word. (If he is gay, he has just committed his biggest blunder). 

But I do know that he has given every impression of being quite bored by politics ever since he joined Cameron’s shadow cabinet: there’s been little evidence of a hunger for power or a burning desire to set things right. For several years now, Hague has looked like a man going through the motions. If he can’t ignore a few nasty little rumours – or think of a clever way of combating them - it really is time for this very engaging, very funny, very human man to return to writing books and appearing on TV. I suspect those activities give him a lot more pleasure - and a far larger income - than his current job.

But whatever he decides to do, he really must never again don a baseball cap or share a hotel room with another man: the first is deeply embarrassing, the second - if you’re heterosexual - deeply creepy.