Tony Blair loves to cast devolution as a natural development of his re-definition of "New Labour" as "the people's party". But the people may well be disappointed around lunchtime today when the result of the Welsh leadership contest is announced in St David's Hotel at Cardiff Bay.
Rhodri Morgan would seem indisputably to be "the people's" choice. The Welsh Secretary, Mr Alun Michael, has admitted that his rival is the more popular among the party's grass-roots. Mr Morgan fully expects to claim the lion's share when the votes of the party's 25,000 Welsh members are counted this morning.
But that, plus the clear support of a majority of the party's candidates for the Welsh assembly, may not be enough to clinch it. In the three-part electoral college, the "key decision-makers" may still prove to be the party's Westminster and European MPs, and the trade union barons.
For it is the outsider Morgan - at 59 apparently considered too old for a place in Mr Blair's government - who has been campaigning against "machine" politics. And by a delicious (and for the leadership, deeply uncomfortable) irony, if Mr Blair's man Michael does emerge victorious, it will be seen to be courtesy of tactics more redolent of Old Labour than New - a combination of committee carve-ups, and the delivery of the trade union block votes.
Indeed, Mr Michael (55) stands to be anointed today without having won any of the one-member, one-vote ballots held during this three-month campaign.
Not that the Secretary of State's victory is yet guaranteed. Sources close to both contenders have predicted a photo-finish, with a possible margin either way of as little as 5 per cent. But Mr Michael received a late, and important, boost with yesterday's decision by the big GMB union to back him - support worth 6.2 per cent of the overall vote. With block-vote support from the transport workers and engineering unions already in the bag, the calculation last night was that Mr Michael probably had, and would retain, the edge.
Mr Michael made a fist of defending the electoral procedure on television earlier this week, insisting that it was democratically approved by Labour, that Labour was the popular choice in Wales, and that its choice for leader would in turn prove popular in the country at large.
Not everyone is so sanguine. Prof Kevin Morgan, who was chairman of the Yes campaign in the 1997 referendum, told BBC's Newsnight: "Alun's been put in an impossible position. I, for one, certainly wouldn't like to be writing his acceptance speech if he wins and it proves to be the case that a substantial majority of the Labour party members voted against him."
There is a certain sympathy out there for Mr Michael, although restrained, one suspects, by his television performances and his obvious New Labourish disdain for serious questioning. Indeed, there was no hint of irony the other day when - rejecting the charge that he is "Tony's poodle" - Mr Michael countered that a more appropriate analogy might be with "a terrier or even a corgi".
The sympathy, such as it is, is rooted in the realisation that Mr Michael would really have preferred not to be in this race at all. He maintains he was always pro-devolution. But such was his enthusiasm that, until four months ago, he had no thoughts of seeking election to the Welsh assembly - plotting, instead, a clear and perfectly worthy route up the Whitehall ladder.
All that was changed by Ron Davies' "moment of madness" on Clapham Common. The events of that dark October night gave Mr Michael his entree into the cabinet. But his feet were no sooner under the table than he was announcing his intention to be first secretary in the Welsh assembly.
He contends, perhaps entirely fairly, that he swiftly realised the logic of accepting Mr Blair's offer to replace Ron Davies was to see through the work started by Mr Davies, and to take his place at the head of the new administration. But the perception sticks that, unlike Mr Davies, his credentials derive from Mr Blair's favour, rather than from life-long dedication to the devolution process.
In a searing analysis Edward Pearce, writing in the Scotsman, says Mr Michael in victory "will be vested with ceremonial khaki shorts and plumed topee as governor-general. He will be London's choice for Wales".
More politely, Rhodri Morgan sees London's interference as a failure still to grasp that the whole idea of devolution "is that in Scotland and Wales people will be making their own choices". And it is the remorseless logic of that which prompts a warning from a fellow MP, Mr Paul Flynn, that Mr Blair need not presume today's is the last word. Noting that today's choice is between two people not yet elected to the assembly, he told the BBC's Newsnight: "What will happen is that the assembly itself will choose its leader . . . And of course it's conceivable that they will take a different view from the election that's announced on Saturday."
Mr Blair understands well enough the theory of devolution, and of ceding control. The sense is that he is just beginning to confront the reality of it.