When Mr William Hague stands before the faithful at the Conservative Party conference in Bournemouth later this week he might be forgiven for wondering if, beyond the constituencies, anyone in Britain really knows who he is.
On the basis of an ICM/Observer poll published yesterday 21 per cent of voters, which translates into nearly 10 million people, could not name the Conservative leader and a mere 6 per cent were unable to correctly identify the shadow chancellor, Mr Francis Maude. More than one-quarter of those polled, 26 per cent, still believed that Mr Hague's Euro-rival, the former chancellor of the exchequer, Mr Kenneth Clarke, was pulling the strings of Tory economic policy despite his resignation from the shadow cabinet over the leader's stance on ruling out membership of the single currency for at least 10 years.
The leadership will no doubt dismiss the poll, pointing out to each other and their constituents that a great many of the shadow cabinet are new faces promoted from the back benches. Nonetheless they will be armed with the knowledge that they must do better to raise their profile.
Mr Hague was much more concerned with trumpeting the result of the "Euro ballot", which will be announced later today on the eve of the conference, about the outcome of which no one is in any real doubt: it will support his stance on the single currency. The result is expected to back Mr Hague overwhelmingly.
Speaking on ITV's Jonathan Dimbleby programme, Mr Hague said he refused to be overawed by "big beasts", such as the pro-European Mr Clarke or the former deputy prime minister, Mr Michael Heseltine. "The party isn't being run by big beasts in the jungle any more. It belongs to the members . . . I am saying to the remaining minority: take it or leave it," Mr Hague said. "This is going to be the policy. The party will have made its decision and we are going on now."
However, Mr Heseltine rejected Mr Hague's insistence that the result will represent a final "settlement" of the debate over membership of the single currency. Speaking on BBC's Breakfast with Frost, he said: "The argument is certainly not over. The argument is not within the gift of the Conservative Party. It is in the gift of the government now to decide when and if we apply to join the single currency. I think we will apply."
Blaming the Euro-sceptics for causing division among Tories, he insisted: "They are, of course, responsible for dividing the party - wholly unnecessarily - on John Major's stance on Maastricht, which was a perfectly containable stance given that no one was being asked to take a decision on the Economic and Monetary Union situation."
Mr Hague's recent comment that he is prepared to go on without his opponents seems to have been taken literally by Mr Clarke. According to reports yesterday, Mr Clarke, who is vice-chairman of the cross-party European Movement, held a secret meeting with the Labour peer and adviser on Europe, Lord Hollick, two weeks ago to discuss the possibility of a joint Yes campaign ahead of a referendum on the single currency.
However, Mr Clarke, who returns from a birdwatching holiday in Arizona today, will not be daunted by the accusations of treachery from his colleagues as he prepares to continue his pro-European campaign with gusto.
Meanwhile, the former Tory prime minister, Sir Edward Heath, displayed his contempt for the Euroballot when he described it as irrelevant. Warning the leadership that it must adopt more broadly based policies if it wants to regain power, he said: "I don't agree with this orgy of referenda people are having. The party has been pushed further and further to the right and so many of our party supported the Labour Party at the last election. The reason is they felt the party was not looking after the whole of our people."