Could Britain's general election prove interesting after all? Or can the media at least conspire to make it seem so?
The latter question is assuming more and more pertinence as planning meetings intensify, with the likely deadlines and probable start-dates drawing ever closer, and with interest on the outcome largely focused on the scale of Labour's likely majority and whether it is enough to trigger an immediate challenge to William Hague's leadership of the Tories.
One commentator this week ruefully reflected on the temptation to seize on any rogue poll and declare an open contest. But one rogue will not a Tory recovery make. Nor are even the most dedicated Central Office apparatchiks likely to draw too much encouragement from that student poll suggesting William and Ffion trump Tony and Cheri when it comes to sex appeal.
Yet beyond the headline-grabbing Labour leads (as high as 21 points), the polls suggest that as many as 20 per cent of voters remain undecided, with less than 50 per cent considering themselves of fixed-party-abode whatever the circumstances. Combined with indications that 38 per cent of those who supported Mr Blair last time now consider themselves floating voters, consistent polling evidence of big majorities against scrapping the pound encourages the belief that - against received wisdom - Mr Hague can make the euro a central election issue.
Moreover, as the Mandelson fiasco rumbles on, so grows the perception that the "New" Labour machine looks altogether less formidable and surefooted second time around.
"Things can only get better," sang Peter, Gordon, John et al outside the People's Palace as they awaited Tony's triumphant arrival on the new dawn of New Labour's 1997 victory. Yet a generation too young to remember Jim Callaghan's "winter of discontent" might wonder if things could be much worse.
Police numbers have fallen while violent crime is increasing. The government offers golden-handcuff deals and promises to pay off student-accumulated debts in order to save schools from a growing teacher shortage. Mr Prescott's pledge to get us out of our cars and into an integrated public transport system is a standing joke, while the railways remain a mess. Anyone with recent experience of the state of some of Britain's hospitals might tell Mr Blair he has no need to await the arrival of the predicted midwinter crisis in the National Health Service. For all too many people it is now reality.
Even if BP's £9.8 billion profit does not provoke a fresh wave of fuel protests, countryside campaigners will soon be on the march, pushing rural alienation back up the agenda. Barely a day goes by without a headline declaring the government's handling of the asylum issue a shambles.
In the Labour heartlands, meanwhile, something approaching disbelief will have greeted Downing Street's declaration that "the day of the bogstandard comprehensive is over".
No matter that the comprehensive system may have comprehensively failed: for many natural Labour supporters the egalitarian principle has been the touchstone for socialist antipathy to privilege and education by selection.
Small wonder, then, that some informed Labour sources wondered aloud this week if Mr Blair had scored an own goal in the classroom, as his commitment to specialist schools celebrating "diversity and choice" translated into headlines indicating: "Failing state schools to be privatised."
Mr Hague cleverly twisted the knife yesterday with his promise to end the comprehensive system faster than Mr Blair, by heralding the return of the grammar schools and allowing state schools to become wholly selective if they so wished.
Yet for all his undoubted cleverness, punchy performances in the Commons, better jokes and (according to that student poll at least) sex appeal, Mr Hague still fails to bring New Labour's failings and pretensions convincingly together in a way that should make Mr Blair at least sit up and take notice.
No matter what goes wrong for the government, it seems, nothing goes consequently right for the Tories. All the vanities and personality faultlines at the heart of New Labour have again been laid bare. Yet for all the entertainment value, Mr Mandelson's fall has been followed by an increase in Mr Blair's lead.
Consequently, Tory MPs are again speculating about the scale of defeat Mr Hague might survive. Personal survival apart, meanwhile, on the issue which most matters to the Tories, the polls suggest a second-term Labour government might well erode Mr Hague's anti-euro majority. The stakes for what remains of "Tory Britain" could not be higher. And Mr Hague is running out of time.