If, come the next election or the one after, the Tories are still spitting into the wind of constitutional change, Mr Hague's caution may seem pusillanimity.
In fact, such pusillanimity strengthens the Communists, who some time ago abandoned calls for a return to Soviet days and become a party of extreme nationalists.
When it was established in 1993, the tribunal was widely seen as a fig-leaf to hide the pusillanimity of the western powers, who did not want to intervene in the conflagration devouring the Balkans.
First, in an act which many believe was one of embarrassing pusillanimity, it sent four of its most senior ministers to the airport to receive and talk with yoga guru Baba Ramdev when he arrived in Delhi to begin his anti-corruption hunger strike.