The British party conference season had become staid and predictable.
Managed by the spin doctors, dissent marginalised to the point of invisibility, both the Labour and Tory annual love-ins seemed to have become little more than extended party political broadcasts. Not this year. The brutal eviction of veteran party member Walter Wolfgang by Labour security staff 10 days ago, and last week's riveting Blackpool agonising by the Conservatives has made this year's season the most memorable in many a year.
For the Tories, engaged in yet another search for the elixir of leadership, it is also possible the conference will be seen in future as a turning point of some significance. Will this be the moment when the party finally shakes off the stifling legacy of Lady Thatcher - celebrating her 80th birthday this week but noticeably absent from Blackpool - to embrace that most elusive, desirable, and indefinable brand image of "modernity", bottled and sold so successfully by Tony Blair? Is the party in the process of making itself electable again?
Reportedly the advisers to David Cameron, the personable 38-year-old, whose speech last week rocketed him to the status of media favourite and, polls suggest, darling of the rank and file, had seen the conference as the chance to stake an early claim to the next-but-one leadership of the party. But a week is a long time in politics. His eloquence and charm combined with the woeful performance of the front-runner, David Davis, have made him a real contender this time round.
The problem is the party's system of electing a leader, a two-stage process involving a beauty contest vote next week among MPs which will produce two names for the party's members to vote on by December. It is said that Cameron's youth - is 38 really that young? - and lack of parliamentary and any ministerial experience make him a real gamble for MPs and mean that Davis and former Chancellor Ken Clarke remain the most likely candidates for the run-off.
Yet polls show that whoever the Tories choose as their leader now still faces an almost insurmountable hurdle at the next election against a newly anointed Gordon Brown. Even if he can clothe the party in a new mantle of "modernity and compassion", as Mr Cameron put it yesterday on TV, and break back into the electoral ground ceded to Labour, a new leader may find the party unforgiving in the wake of another defeat. Indeed, it well might suit Cameron to wait awhile in the wings as heir apparent, robbed by an "unjust" leadership election system, while another puts in the hard graft now.