Nobody told him there would be days like these. If you were, say, Alistair Campbell or Jonathan Powell, this was not the day to ask Tony for a raise. The Prime Minister's lips were pursed, teeth slightly on edge, facial expression sombre. Over the morning airwaves we could hear the whining voice of the new Mayor of London and, all the previous night, Labour councils had been falling like skittles in the local elections.
It was not so much the hand of living history on Tony's shoulder as the clutch of Ken Livingstone around his throat. But it was a smart move coming to Northern Ireland. Hardened by 30 years of war, the Belfast media were unmoved by Ken's victory whine and cared little whether Hartlepool, for example, went red or blue: they wanted to get the PM onto the "little local difficulty" as soon as possible.
Tony brightened visibly when it came to questions about the North. He even held out the tantalising prospect of developments during the day: "I hope I will have more to tell you later." Admitting that expectations had been "parked", he hinted at the possibility of switching the power on again at Stormont, subject of course to consultations with the parties.
Even the cynics conceded that Blair's commitment to the peace process had been colossal. He said yesterday it was one of the most worthwhile things he had done: deeply frustrating and deeply fulfilling at the same time. For once "Hillsborough hype" had failed to take hold and Blair's advisers were circumspect: cautious but not lacking in hope. There were possibilities, various ideas and options, and the "atmospherics" were probably better: "We sense the makings of a new impetus but it's no more than that."
The Prime Minister gave his press conference in one of the outhouses at Hillsborough Castle: some said it was the stables converted to modern use. But the Ulster Unionist encounter with the media had to take place outside the gates: it was a telling illustration of who wields the power in the North these days.
This time last year the parties were allowed to hold their press conferences in the garden. But if he felt the pain of exclusion, David Trimble did not show it, nor did his deputy, John Taylor, who was in jovial mood. But their good cheer did not betoken an imminent compromise. Soft words from republicans would not be enough: when were the Provos going to "do the needful"? Trimble laid heavy emphasis on the need to retain the symbols as well as the reality of union with Britain. "This is still a British state."
Sinn Fein prefers to call the North a "statelet" but at this stage there were no Shinners in sight. They appeared to be leaving it to Mr Blair to "sort out" the unionists. After lunch a sighting of Francie Molloy and Conor Murphy was reported: an advance party for Adams and McGuinness who eventually turned up at the head of a sizeable posse just after 4 p.m.
Their demand was simple: Blair should get the institutions up and running. The word on the grapevine was that Sinn Fein felt the Prime Minister should stay until a deal was made because as soon as Blair left for London the negotiations would fall apart.
The Ulster Unionists were excited by a radio interview on RTE with the Irish-American publisher Niall O'Dowd, who has good republican contacts. O'Dowd suggested that if there were moves on demilitarisation, then Sinn Fein and Dublin could persuade the IRA to move beyond its secret February 11th statement on decommissioning to Gen de Chastelain, which apparently outlined the circumstances where weapons could be put beyond use.
However, insiders were giving greater weight to another IRA statement, made a few days earlier on February 5th, which recognised that the arms issue would have to be dealt with and that this was "a necessary objective of a genuine peace process". The statement reiterated that the IRA did not represent a threat to the peace process.
Fairly unexceptional on the surface, perhaps, but in the legalistic world of republicanism, words carry great weight. For the IRA to acknowledge the need for decommissioning as part of consolidating peace would be seen by some as a significant step.
A pledge that the IRA was no threat to the peace process could be interpreted as a long-term commitment to non-violence provided politics was seen to be working. At the time, Trimble said the statement contained "nothing new" but then, like the rest of us, the UUP leader is on a learning curve when it comes to republicanism.
The Taoiseach and the Prime Minister were due to meet around 4.30 p.m. Senior unionists were speculating the talks could continue into today, or might be adjourned until early next week. Always the unionists kept playing for time, going for the "long game", hoping no doubt that Blair and Ahern would weary of the quest. Certainly there was weariness in the air, not just in the government camps. But this was frequently combined with a sense of purpose: the time for posturing and taking hardline stances to reassure your followers was over, now it was necessary to do business.
But if decommissioning was being acknowledged at last as a problem to be got around rather than confronted - rather like the Titanic should have done with the iceberg - other difficulties were rearing their heads. The Patten report was described as a "huge" obstacle for Trimble's people, who were constrained by the motion on the issue passed at the Ulster Unionist Council.
Something was being done about the badge apparently but the detail of this was unclear. The real difficulty, insiders said, was the name. The notion of retaining the RUC title in parallel with the new name of Police Service of Northern Ireland was in the air but was causing great difficulties on the nationalist side. There were also said to be difficulties over partnership boards for local policing: the unionists were worried about Provo godfathers ruling local areas while Sinn Fein was reported to be concerned about continuing unionist domination of policing.
Friedrich Engels defined the state as "bodies of armed men" and what started as a humdrum set of negotiations now appeared to be developing into an epic battle for the state - or "statelet" - of Northern Ireland. Perhaps everyone at the table did not understand the precise relationship between symbols and substance but the unionists knew what they wanted to keep and the nationalists and republicans knew what they were after.
The unionist project of engaging in the peace process only to render it harmless was coming up against the republican programme for "hollowing out the Union" by denuding it of crown regalia and rendering Northern Ireland a symbolically neutral zone prior to its ultimate absorption into an agreed united Ireland.
The quiet village of Hillsborough had seen historic events before. The 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement was another major development announced there. That was the shotgun but this was the wedding and the unionist bride was still reluctant to marry the republican groom.