Last Thursday, Mr Paddy Ashdown challenged the real Tony Blair to declare himself. Was the Prime Minister, he demanded, "a pluralist" or "a control freak?"
Mr Blair, he suggested, should relax a little, let go a little, tolerate dissent a little. The Liberal Democrat delegates liked that. And one could almost hear the guffaws from behind the walls of Number 10.
New Labour's controllers have not got where they are by indulging that sort of sentiment. They remember the 1981 Labour conference as if it were yesterday - Tony Benn and Denis Healey slugging it out, a "high point" of internal party democracy, enjoyed at leisure during what proved to be 18 years in the wilderness.
Tolerating dissent is not what Mr Blair and his minders are about. They have no intention of reverting to the gory days, when objectionable trade unionists told prime ministers to "get stuffed" and when Chancellors of the Exchequer were obliged to make their pitch from the podium like any other of "the comrades", only to be booed and jeered for their pains.
Four years ago, Mr Blair challenged conference to back him, not just because it believed he could win but because it thought he was right - right when he told the British people that Labour had changed.
And this week's conference planners will have left nothing to chance in their determination to hammer home the message that Labour's "modernisation" process continues apace.
Mr Blair's "spin doctors" argue that too much is made of their power and influence - that the journalists' obsession with them reflects a preoccupation with their own trade and the desire to write about it. Yet every now and again we see evidence of the formidable energy devoted to keeping this party "on message".
On Saturday, it emerged that a Labour official was sacked after circulating an insulting memo about party activists, intended to help contain troublemakers in Blackpool this week.
The party confirmed that the list was drawn up by a liaison officer to top Labour officials attending a training session earlier this month for London conference delegates. Then again, in this age of control, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised to find the party training the delegates before letting them loose at conference proper.
Certainly, Mr Alistair Campbell, Mr Peter Mandelson and company would see nothing odd about that. They won't have turned a hair on hearing Baroness Barbara Castle complain that the party was being "sanitised out of all democratic vitality".
And they will have smiled knowingly at the MP, Mr Austin Mitchell, and his depiction of New Labour: "The new members who flocked in last year were not buying a life of boredom as party members but a lottery ticket. It won. That's it. Goodbye. The older members are perennially disappointed and must be ignored."
With the Tories nowhere and Mr Blair still able to "walk on water", the Grimsby MP announced he was taking himself off for the week to Cuba with a parliamentary delegation: "Old Labour reminiscing about the good old days with Old Commies, two extinct species in a socialist Jurassic Park to discuss where we went wrong."
Quite so, Mr Campbell and Mr Mandelson might rejoin, as they bid Mr Mitchell a less-then-fond farewell and turn their thoughts to others they would happily see join him on the flight to Cuba.
For despite their best endeavours dissent can still be found in a party curiously underwhelmed by a Labour government still riding high in the public's esteem.
The very demand for discipline seems to fuel the desire for some diversity - witness the Left's success last night in claiming four of six possible seats in the activists section of the elections for the ruling National Executive Committee.
Mr Blair is still at the height of his power. Nobody seeks the platform's humiliation. And - disdain for the so-called Third Way apart - the Left has no obvious alternative project.
Yet in spats on the conference floor, and certainly on the fringe this week, there will be evidence that on a whole range of policy issues, from the economy to welfare reform, the single currency to proportional representation, trade union rights to the government's relationship with big business (and Rupert Murdoch), sections of this party distrust Mr Blair as much as he distrusts his party.
He will, of course, carry all before him. There will be celebration of Labour's (considerable) achievements to date. And there is unity around the all-important goal of securing a second term.
But there is also real fear of recession and the impact of mounting job losses, growing resistance to the Bank of England's policy on interest rates, and uncertainty as to how Mr Brown will square the promise of greater social justice (and spending) with Mr Blair's renewed commitment to tax cuts.
Echoing Labour's election promise, Mr Blair said yesterday that "things are getting better". But the depression evident in sections of this party barely a year on from electoral landslide reflects the suspicion that this might be as good as it gets.