In just seven days from now British political and electoral history will be made. The people of Scotland will elect the first Scottish parliament in 300 years, while the people of Wales elect a national assembly which may become a template for the future government of the English regions.
Tony Blair's devolution project is transforming the United Kingdom.
In ways that could not have been foreseen, it is also transforming the British Labour Party. For with the Conservatives still in oblivion, Labour is being recast as the party of the Union.
The dying hours of the 1997 general election campaign witnessed a remarkable spectacle. Two years ago yesterday to the day, the prime minister, John Major, journeyed frantically from London to Cardiff, to Edinburgh and Belfast, in a desperate final effort to "wake up Britain" to the threat of New Labour's devolution plans.
As it had (or, at any rate, as he convinced himself it had) played to his advantage in 1992, so again Mr Major hoped the threat to "the unity of the Kingdom" would prove an ace electoral card. It did not.
If the people of Britain believed a Scottish parliament spelt certain conflict with Westminster, and inevitable separation, they seemed not to care.
Not least because the Tories won the 1992 election when it was believed they should not, the electorate's business last time was to turf them finally out of office.
And, of course, that "stolen" victory over Neil Kinnock in 1992 - and the disastrous prolongation of the Tory government for a further five years - contributed hugely to the scale of the massacre visited upon Mr Major and his discredited administration on May 1st two years ago.
In the days and weeks that followed, those High Tories who provided the line, and believed it - not only that devolution spelt the beginning of the end of the Union, but, worse, the easier absorption of Britain in a Europe of the regions - could only fear the worst.
If only they had not won in 1992, things might have looked very different in 1997. Labour might still have been in power, but maybe without the kind of Commons majority necessary to crush protracted parliamentary opposition to a major constitutional bill.
As it happened, Mr Blair was swept to power with a majority beyond his wildest imaginings. And the speed with which he capitalised on that victory, and his cleverness in seeking the prior approval of the people in the ensuing referendums, left the Tories no choice but to bow to "the settled will" of the Scottish people.
The close call in Wales prompted immediate demands for a rethink on the Cardiff model. But the Tories quickly ran out of steam. Blair's project was secure. And, if the Labour government remains unconvincing in its response to the West Lothian Question (on the rights of Scottish MPs at Westminster post-devolution), it must be said the Conservatives have hardly been any more coherent or convincing.
The reality, of course, would be that, for all its previous opposition, the Conservative Party, having been wiped off the electoral map, would seize the opportunity provided by the Scottish and Welsh elections to begin the long haul back.
Indeed - as the Conservative Party in London threatens to tear itself apart over its devotion, or otherwise, to the Thatcher legacy - two things have been striking about the Scottish election campaign.
One, that the Tories have been obliged to devolve fully their effort to Edinburgh. And two that the devolved Tory leader, Mr David McLetchie, has spoken openly about his willingness to enter a coalition with Labour to repel the nationalist threat.
Mr Donald Dewar, the putative first minister at Holyrood, is unlikely to have to call on Mr McLetchie's services. With the SNP vote apparently in something of a free-fall, some Labour insiders are beginning to wonder if they just might secure an overall majority.
However, to do so would require Labour, for the first time, to claim more than 50 per cent of the Scottish vote, and the conventional wisdom remains that Labour and the Liberal Democrats will provide Scotland with a coalition government.
But the very fact that Mr McLetchie should think aloud in such a manner underlines, albeit perhaps in an unintended way, the newly-entrenched perception of Labour as a unionist party.
Some Tories growl that Labour is stronger on the rhetoric than the reality - that Mr Blair's unionism is a direct response to the very dangers he himself has created. And there persists a belief in many quarters that Labour's grand project has been altogether less seamless and consistent than might be guessed from the rave reviews of academics and longstanding constitutional reformers.
Many Labour insiders still believe Mr Blair would have been relieved had the Scottish people rejected tax-raising powers for the new parliament. It is at the insistence of leading members of Mr Blair's cabinet that members of the Welsh executive will not be known as "ministers". And there is perhaps a certain irony in the fact that Labour is finally on the point of delivering devolution at a time when Scots predominate in the upper reaches of the cabinet in London.
Against that, there is the Labour case, most trenchantly articulated recently by Gordon Brown, that it was the Tories - with their devotion to a narrow definition of Britishness, and their refusal to concede institutional reform - who provoked the most serious nationalist threat.
And there is the reality that, however it has come about - and it was not least courtesy of the scale of the Tory collapse - it now falls to Labour to steer through constitutional change while preserving the unity of Mr Blair's kingdom.
Mr Blair's awareness of the dangers was evident in his determination to secure the Welsh leadership in Alun Michael's "safe pair of hands". It is reflected in Mr Brown's redefinition of a Britishness "of values" - and, perhaps above all, in the leadership's acknowledgement that it will fall to Labour members in Cardiff and Edinburgh to be prepared to argue "the case for Britain".
Assuming the SNP is to provide the official opposition at Holyrood, Labour SMPs in particular will have no shortage of opportunities to do so. On a range of issues - tax and expenditure; naval bases, nuclear and defence policy; European negotiations; perhaps, should the popular mood change, after the commitment of ground troops in Kosovo - Mr Alex Salmond will have the luxury of arguing Scotland's case alone. And for all the drubbing he's been taking during the present campaign, it is perhaps the knowledge of this that keeps the smile on his face!