[thegeek]

Yes, that and budgets from 1995 and the 96 Olympics were effectively the pilots for BBC News Online, which then launched the same week as News 24 (the projects being strongly linked, even sharing the flags branding). I suspect they would have wanted to launch the channel for the election, but it wouldn't really matter as very few could watch until the launches of DSAT and DTT in autumn 1998.

The Politics 97 site is, remarkably, still online:
www.bbc.co.uk/politics97 

Its predecessors, the pages from the 95 and 96 budgets and the 97 election were still accessible until a few years ago, and there's a bit of a write-up of them here:

www.currybet.net 

Another elderly survivor is the pages of On the Record, which includes transcripts of their interviews right back to 1992
www.bbc.co.uk