This was the year Ken Livingstone was to come back to haunt Tony Blair. And for many within New Labour the prospect was worse than Frank Dobson actually winning the London mayoral election. On Friday May 5th Livingstone's 14-year exile from the job of London's leader came to an end, leaving Mr Blair to put a brave face on it and the spin doctors contemplating the first failure of an administration characterised by its instinct to control.
They had put off contemplating failure. Sure, Tony had insisted all along that he would work with the new mayor whatever his, or her, political persuasion. But everyone knew the public statements masked private anguish and Tony's regret over trying to interfere in the mayoral contest had a hollow ring when set against the No 10 spin machine.
So, while the Prime Minister spoke in April about getting the judgment wrong in London, Downing Street's spinmeisters were briefing about giving Ken enough rope to hang himself with. Mr Blair had understood the lesson that blocking and then attempting to undermine Livingstone was counterproductive, but No 10 sources let it be known that the jury was still out on Red Ken.
The truth was apparent soon after Livingstone's mayoral triumph. Barely a few days after the election, political battle was joined over the issue of the Government's public-private partnership plans for the Tube - bitterly opposed by Livingstone, who favours keeping the system in the public sector.
It was meant to be the key rallying issue for Livingstone and his supporters. But that was back in May and since then there has been little sign of movement or political fireworks on either side. Apart from a brief, if predictable, knockabout over transport in the early days of Livingstone's tenure, the Mayor and the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, have retreated into their respective bunkers and the Tube remains as woefully underfunded as ever.
Seven months after his election there is a growing feeling that Mayor Livingstone hasn't done very much. Some critics argue he can't even organise a fireworks party. The extent of Livingstone's culpability over the fiasco of London's cancelled New Year's Eve fireworks display - with the capital having to pick up the bill for thousands of fireworks shipped out from India - depends on what he knew when.
He insisted he didn't know until October that the Tube authorities planned to shut down the network in the early afternoon of New Year's Eve, thus prompting Ken to pull the plug on the celebrations. The Tube bosses insisted the organisers knew about their plans in the summer and in the event, Livingstone gambled on them backing down. But in the words of the London Evening Standard: @@Pilot Livingstone had rushed to the cockpit too late."
Yet despite the growing perception that Livingstone has failed to shine, Londoners told him this month @@so far so good". Although the biggest concern is still his reputation for extremism, a recent poll of business leaders in London declared the Mayor was their preferred politician - over Mr Blair and Mr Hague.
The tag of @@work in progress" pinned on Livingstone's administration similarly applied in Wales this year. After Alun Michael's resignation in February as First Secretary commentators agreed the trauma of Blair's interference in trying to fix the leadership of the Welsh Labour Party could be put to one side and the Assembly could get down to the business of government.
Under the minority Labour administration, led by the populist figure of Rhodri Morgan as the new First Secretary, the Assembly had serious difficulties to overcome, not least the perception that it was weak and ineffective. It is the curse of minority administrations that they have little room for manoeuvre. And working against the backdrop of poor economic conditions in Wales, the inability to draft primary legislation and an administration unwilling to court controversy and lift its head above the parapet, public satisfaction with the Assembly nosedived.
By December, after several months' negotiation, the Welsh Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats in the Assembly agreed to form a coalition. A programme of government, Putting Wales First, was published and a mini-Queen's Speech with 70 legislative proposals was drawn up promising stability and progress in the principality.
As John Osmond, director of the Institute of Welsh Affairs, wrote in the Irish Times last year, the Welsh Assembly had a much bigger task than the stuff of day-to-day politics, it was charged with encouraging a greater sense of society and citizenship in Wales. That process is under way, with a developing awareness in Wales that the Assembly is not so much a constitutional novelty anymore but an administration growing into its role as a focus for political and civic society.
The administration has recently been described as a @@government", and the leader of Plaid Cymru is referred to as the leader of the Opposition, all of which contributes to the belief that the Assembly has finally got down to business. Devolution in London has been rather uneventful, but in Wales, if the politicians have their way, it looks as if the fun may be about to start.