It has been an embarrassing 48 hours for the Tory leader, Mr William Hague. Crushed by the Liberal Democrats in the Winchester by-election and only managing to hang on to the Beckenham seat by their fingertips, the Tories are as yet unable to rally themselves in opposition.
And their troubles continued yesterday. The pro-European Tory MP, Mr Peter Temple-Morris, resigned after Mr Hague withdrew the Whip following repeated calls by the MP for the party to adopt a less hostile attitude towards Europe.
Mr Temple-Morris now says he will sit in the Commons as an independent one-nation Tory, close to Labour MPs.
Successive attempts by the Tories to put the devastating general election defeat behind them have ended in ridicule. MPs were berated in the media and in the Commons over the Conservative Party's "bonding weekend" at a south coast hotel, while the only other by-election win during this Parliament, in Uxbridge this summer, is now long forgotten.
In the cold light of defeat at Winchester, even Mr Hague's commendable performance at the despatch box during Labour's Formula One affair will provide little comfort for the Tories as they contemplate "Black Friday".
What happened in Winchester? The Tory candidate, the former health minister, Mr Gerry Malone, accepted the blame for the defeat squarely and absolved Mr Hague of any responsibility.
When the result came through in the early hours of yesterday morning he saw his two-vote majority at the general election dissolve into a 21,556 humiliation and he turned and said: "It was Gerry Malone who fought this election . . . It is a hangover from May 1st."
That Mr Malone is a Scot - not an advantage when fighting against the "local" Liberal Democrat candidate, Mr Mark Oaten - parachuted into a safe Tory seat did not endear him to the voters. And the Winchester result was a slap in the face for Mr Malone for the simple reason that voters believed he was a bad loser and should not have challenged the original result.
In Beckenham, the Tories won the seat "by the skin of their teeth". But voters there also seemed annoyed at the prospect of going to the polls following Mr Piers Merchant's resignation.
As a result, the Conservative candidate, Mrs Jacqui Lait, won the seat by a slim majority of 1,227 - down from a majority of almost 5,000 in the general election - from Labour's candidate, Mr Bob Hughes.
A Tory party official put the result down to a simple point: "I think people feel let down by the Tory party and by Piers Merchant in particular."
But Mr Hughes was cutting: "Despite all the talk of a fresh future for the Tory Party here in Beckenham . . . voters stayed at home rather than vote for William Hague's party."
Both results and the resignation of Mr Temple-Morris will act as timely reminders to Mr Hague that he has a long road to travel before his party will be taken seriously by the voters.
And the intervention of the former deputy prime minister, Mr Michael Heseltine, who described the sacking of Mr Temple-Morris as "unwise and unnecessary", will not have been welcomed by Mr Hague.
The run of bad luck for the Tories also served as "confirmation" for the British press yesterday that Mr Blair's honeymoon is not over, despite the Formula One shambles.
Clearly, Mr Blair's government has ridden out the storm of the past two weeks and the allegations of "sleaze" from a Conservative Party that should have known better than to throw stones in glass houses.