One Irish observer of the British scene quickly dubbed it "the Paddy's Day election". But the luck of the Irish certainly wasn't with John Major on March 17th when he finally put the British people out of their misery and set the general election for Thursday, May 1st.
Much mythology attaches to prime ministers and their choice of election dates. But in the end it emerged the boring and predictable was what he had always planned: the latest practical rendezvous with the electorate, his remaining few hopes reposing in the longest possible campaign.
It proved only the longest nightmare in the life of a Conservative government, wracked by internal dissent and battered by public perceptions of incompetence and sleaze since shortly after Mr Major's surprise win in 1992.
Even as the Conservative leader made his brief, formal visit to Buckingham Palace to seek the dissolution, it seemed clear his "magic" touch had deserted him.
The previous autumn, when the Tories had briefly recovered their senses for conference week, suddenly seemed it might have been a more auspicious backdrop for the always-audacious bid for a fifth term in office. By March, with Labour commanding a stunning 25-point lead in the polls, the comparisons were with Jim Callaghan's "winter of discontent".
During those long months, as Mr Major stubbornly awaited the never-to-return "feelgood" factor, the electorate were treated to the gradual erosion of his Commons majority and ever-increasing reliance on the Ulster Unionists; the disastrous Douglas Hogg in a perpetual stew over beef and food safety; sporadic outbreaks of cabinet warfare over Europe and the spectacle, ultimately, of ministers positioning themselves for the succession battle which would inevitably follow defeat.
Defeat seemed ever-more certain on day one of the campaign when the Sun (them "wot won it" in '92) declared for Mr Blair. It was reported, and never adequately denied, that Lady Thatcher considered Mr Blair a patriot who wouldn't let the country down (that is, who could be "trusted" on Europe). And from there it was downhill all the way.
Neil Hamilton (of Harrod's envelopes fame) won brief respite when Piers Merchant was caught out with a 17-year-old Soho nightclub hostess, although the emergence of ex-BBC "white knight" Martin Bell put Mr Hamilton's Tatton constituency on the map as the battleground over sleaze. Anything that could go wrong assuredly did - a minister forced to stand down after revelations about his private life, his potential successor similarly nobbled, this time thanks to internal party "dirty tricks".
However, the enduring memory of Mr Major's campaign was the dramatic press conference in which he finally let loose, publicly imploring his party not to "bind his hands" and leave him "naked" at the Euro-conference table.
It was all over by April 16th, the Tory leader defiantly alone in his belief there was anything left to play for - individual candidates writing their own European manifestos in a manner reminiscent of American congressional candidates taking flight from a no-hope presidential runner. The Tories had decided there was no coat-tail effect, only personal salvation left.
But not for that many. "Out, out, out," cried jubilant Labour supporters as David Mellor crashed to defeat in Putney. Out, too, went Malcolm Rifkind, Michael Forsyth, Edwina Currie, Marcus Fox, William Waldegrave, Norman Lamont, Neil Hamilton and an army of others. Early reports of Michael Howard's demise proved exaggerated. But a nation gasped in disbelief as Michael Portillo joined the vanquished. Nothing in Labour's wildest expectations had prepared them for this. The voters hadn't just ejected the Tories from power, they had spat them out with contempt.
As the sun broke over "The People's Palace" on London's South Bank, and while Labour's first prime minister in 18 years received a hero's welcome, his strategists were already at work grappling with the unexpected difficulties which might result from a massive 179 Commons majority.
Such was the scale of the Tory defeat that one of Labour's early decisions was to grant MPs "away" weeks from Westminster to nurture their constituencies.
As breathtaking as the scale of Mr Blair's triumph was the speed with which he and his team hit the ground. The boldest and earliest announcement was that an independent Bank of England would in future set interest rates - thus reassuring the City and international markets at a stroke that Gordon Brown would not fall foul of the pressures and temptations which bedevilled previous Labour chancellors.
Labour had devoted immense effort to preparation for the first 100 days. And it showed, with a daily burst of policy announcements, initiatives and reviews which only underlined the hapless state (and, for the time being, the irrelevance) of the Tory Party as it rejected the advice of its own grassroots, preferring the 36-year-old William Hague to former chancellor Clarke as John Major's successor. Mr Blair eagerly seized that onward Tory march to the Euro-sceptic right as proof that "New Labour" was now the party of One Nation.
The Tories responded that the opposite would be the effect of Labour's programme of constitutional reform. But while Labour came close to defeat in Wales, the Scottish referendum established once and for all "the settled will of the Scottish people".
1998 will see legislation enacted establishing the Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly, and, next May, Londoners will go to the polls on the government's proposals for an elected mayor and the capital's first elected authority since the abolished GLC. Lord Jenkins is heading a Commission on possible electoral reform for Westminster elections, and a White Paper on freedom of information promises legislation establishing an assumption in favour of disclosure which directly threatens Whitehall's prevailing culture of secrecy.
Mr Blair faced his first serious party revolt in November, when 47 MPs found the proposed benefit cut for future single mothers one step too many along the "Thatcherite" road. But he can also point to an extra £2.3 billion found for school buildings and the reduction of class sizes; an extra £1.5 billion committed to the NHS over the first two years; a commitment to nursery provision for all four-year-olds; radical, if as yet unproven, "welfare to work" schemes dedicated to taking 250,000 young people off the dole queue and, most ambitiously of all, the creation of a Social Exclusion Unit charged with co-ordinating multi-agency efforts to end the alienation associated with truancy and school exclusion and homelessness in Britain's worst estates.
It remains to be seen how effective these measures will be without massive new resources, and how far Middle Britain - already smarting from mortgage rises, higher pension costs and threatened council tax rises - will indulge a creeping policy of redistribution. Mr Blair may one day live to regret the size of that Commons majority, particularly as he seems serious about welfare reform. And he will not be able forever to rely on his personal "trust" with the British people to explain away the embarrassments generated by donations from Formula One or ministers enjoying the benefits of offshore tax havens.
On the most crucial foreign policy issue of all, Mr Blair is already discovering the price of British isolation on the single currency, and - having declined to take the risk at the peak of his powers - faces the prospect of finally having to decide on the issue in potentially very different circumstances.
But EMU, he has decreed, is a matter for the next parliament, not this. For the moment at least "Teflon" Tony appears almost to transcend the party political stage, while Mr Hague struggles to establish his place on it. Mr Blair has established clear blue water of his own between the Conservatives and "New Labour". For all the charges and fears of timidity, his grand design is strikingly ambitious. And the people are still willing it to succeed.