Farewell, then, to Blackpool. And not a moment too soon for disgruntled hacks, frustrated by the success of the party's enforcers and the determination of delegates generally to prove New Labour fit for office.
Mr Alistair Campbell and his army of spin doctors will be well pleased with that result. And people generally will think "fair play to them". Politics is a serious business, and nobody in their right mind would dispute that all those years of lunacy and bloodletting were a gross dereliction by an opposition purportedly offering itself as a government-in-waiting.
The people punished it mercilessly, and Mr Blair wasn't slow to invoke the memory after the early embarrassment of seeing four leftwingers - including a woman banned from standing as a parliamentary candidate last year - elected to the National Executive Committee by constituency activists. His message was simple.
Constructive criticism OK. But not suspicion and opposition carried to the point where the government is perceived as the enemy of the party.
The control freaks (and this party has many of them) saw sweet revenge on Wednesday when the veteran left-wing MP Dennis Skinner lost his seat, after almost 20 years' service on the party's ruling body.
In truth, the NEC has lost much of its power to Mr Blair's internal reforms. That fact, and the concentration of power in the leadership, had fuelled unease about its determined attempts to block any leftwing success - including the issue of ballot papers to lapsed members.
And there was a bitter taste after Mr Skinner's ejection, with Ken Livingstone alleging some MPs were intimidated by the fear that numbered ballot papers would enable officials to identify the way MPs and MEPs had voted in the parliamentary section.
The numbers were apparently subsequently removed. But the episode, perhaps minor of itself, is illustrative of what many regard as an overbearing leadership machine, prepared to brook no dissent whatsoever. Conference now is a sanitised affair - devoid of the famed "composite" resolutions stitched together with the union barons in smoke-filled rooms, and the once heady, ever-present threat of a defeat for the platform on the contentious issue of the day.
The sheer scale of Mr Blair's House of Commons supremacy, and the absence of anything resembling effective opposition from the Tories, inclines many outsiders to think, like Paddy Ashdown, that Mr Blair should perhaps lighten up a little.
Yet Mr Blair is probably wise not to be too indulgent. Their reduced circumstance has put some manners on the Old Left. Yet the old instincts are still there, on redistribution, on tax and spending and borrowing. And when the going gets rough, as Mr Blair warned the party this week it assuredly will, the Prime Minister knows he'll suffer no shortage of opposition without shoring it up within his own camp.
Those great "Movations" for the Northern Ireland Secretary may have provided some of the most powerful images of the week. The unprecedented scenes, too, of Britain's ruling party sharing its conference platform with David Trimble and Seamus Mallon (and opening its doors to Gerry Adams and David Ervine as well) provided for some a potent symbol of the "can-do" capacity of this powerful administration.
But the dominant, all-important political message of the week had as much to do with the "can't dos", the limits to flexibility, the burdens and responsibilities of office, and the need for tough choices in what Mr Blair promised would be a year of challenge.
"Things can only get worse" and "This Tony's Not For Turning" were the morning-after headlines proclaiming Mr Blair's warning that unpopularity would surely attend the government's "iron commitment" to sound finances, and to key reforms in education, health and welfare.
They applauded when the leader rejected "this nonsense that we're just a more moderate or competent Tory government". The government, after all, has pumped £800 million into Britain's poorest estates; raised child benefit by over 20 per cent; granted workers a minimum four weeks' holiday; increased aid to Africa and Asia by 25 per cent; found an extra £40 billion for spending on schools and hospitals; signed up 140,000 young men and women for the New Deal; cut class sizes already for 100,000 five-to-seven-year-olds; and introduced Britain's first statutory minimum wage.
But many delegates must have winced as the Winter Gardens reverberated with the echo of Margaret Thatcher's TINA - "There is No Alternative" - with his own "There will be no backing down."
Continued bearing down on inflation, no backing down on interest rates, the Bank of England's independence, or tough rules on public spending and borrowing. No backing down on performance-related pay for good head teachers or on a ruthless assault on billions wasted in social security fraud and abuse. Reform of the welfare state "is its only salvation," he told the left.
Urging "backbone not backdown" with a thoroughly Thatcherite relish, Mr Blair tore into vested interests, ineffective bosses, and poor teachers, warning doctors that extra spending on the NHS would have to be matched by "modernisation" - with regular inspections, results published, and failures remedied. As he affirmed his commitment to "zero tolerance" on crime, and the first government paper on support for the family, it wasn't only the cynics who thought it sounded pretty reminiscent of much that had gone before.
But what does it all mean and where does it all lead? For the moment, the party appears able to live with the seeming contradictions. The government has made a good start, finding extra resources for pet projects. There is potency in Mr Blair's new Clause 4 - "By the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone" - and both relief and belief in the strength of his sense of community both at home and abroad.
Yet one suspects the delegates are only too acutely aware of the tough choices that may lie ahead. On the day Mr Blair addressed conference, ministers were announcing measures to help another 1,000 workers set to lose their jobs in the Borders. The next day they heard Chancellor Brown's growth forecasts called into question. It's all very well casting current difficulties in the context of the global slowdown, but the difficulties impinge on the lives of real people living here.
What if the economy has a hard landing? And what, for all Mr Blair's and New Labour's enthusiasm for devolution, could be the implications for the developing state of "British" politics with the transfer of powers to areas of the UK where the Old Labour instinct still rules? What will be the effect of the euro, and Britain's patent lack of preparation for it, and when and what will Mr Blair decide? Next year's conference might prove altogether more lively.