Phew, so that's all right then. Just as a few hours of sunshine following days of rain seemed to give Brighton a whole new image, so Labour, after a dank, dreary week, has something to smile about again. Gordon is going to come up with the money for pensioners, Tony has come up with the apologies. We're on our way again, bright, white and squeaky clean, like a penitent just emerged from confession.
Well, that's what many gathered in Brighton this week are saying as they pack their bags and head for home. But a good number of others are less sanguine. In the bars and corridors, there's no doubt what the main theme of the week has been - just how serious is all this? Are the shocking poll reversals, as the leadership claims, just the result of a media conspiracy, aided by a few right-wing nutters who drive lorries and tractors? Or has Labour really lost it as far as that fickle beast, public opinion, is concerned?
Seasoned veterans of the grim Kinnock years made the point that the current leaders have not really had to struggle with unpopularity before; but the party certainly has, and it was far less flustered or panicky than some members of the press assumed it would be. The problem has not been the party, as it was when Labour last suffered this kind of ratings collapse back in the 1980s. The party may want still more for pensioners, but it is not veering off towards the polar extremes where few of the electorate will dare to tread. It has just been wanting a bit of affection.
The problem hasn't been "the fundamentals", either. The attempts to compare Labour's fuel crisis to John Major's Black Wednesday exit from the ERM eight years ago are simply wrong. Then, Major lost the Tories' economic policy and his "heart of Europe" personal strategy in a single day. There really was a loss of direction. Now, however (as Gordon Brown reminded us last week), the economy is very strong, and good old- fashioned Labour spending priorities are at last beginning to right the chronic underinvestment in public services. Yes, there have been mistakes and misjudgements along the way, from the Dome to the 75p increase in pensions. But now the government has had its wake-up call and, so far as one can tell from the serial apologising, it has woken up. In Tony Blair's words, "we get the message".
The wider problem has been the whole style of new Labour politics and how it relates to the world out there. As the pace of 21st-century life accelerates so, too, do the swings in public opinion - never before so mobile and inconsistent. A buzzing swarm of anger alights on one issue, then suddenly moves on again to something entirely different.
Whipped up by tabloid editors, "the people" want lower taxes and higher pensions at the same time. They want the jobs from Europe and stable exchange rates, but not that bloody euro. They want Blair to "listen" more, but also to lead. And they eagerly devour newspapers that raise people up one week, then smash and humiliate them the next.
And, let's admit it, Blairite politics has involved bending and appeasing this frighteningly unpredictable world. It has meant telling the Mirror one thing and the editor of the Daily Mail another. It has sounded as if having your cake and eating it had become a prime Labour aim. The party talked about "tough choices", but acted all too often as if clever PR and the charisma of the man at the top could settle all the inevitable contradictions.
Now that he has proved to be only human, the spin-doctors have made fools of themselves, and the days of deception are ending.
Any real hope for a full recovery, therefore, has to rest on the belief that in their outstanding speeches, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown recognised fully that the only way to survive is not to hide the choices, but to proclaim and even celebrate them.
That was what cheered people, deep down, in Brighton - the belief that the disguises had been ripped away by the harsh winds of adversity, and a fairly traditional Labour government was at last emerging. Small wonder that the "new" in the party's conference logo was but a pale shadow compared to the vivid "Labour".
On the broad policy agenda, it is hard to imagine how the government could now reverse again. Brown's comprehensive spending review, and the taxation policies to fuel it, are so deeply embedded in the meaning of Labour in 2000 that ditching it all really would be an ERM-style collapse. And with an election coming up, it is also clear that the dark arts of new Labour are being turned to winning a more traditional case. Maybe the real figure of Tory public spending cuts is not quite the £16bn proclaimed by ministers. But there is a very deep hole in Conservative plans and everyone knows it; and if Millbank can ram home what that would mean to every town, housing estate and village in the country, no one in the party will have reason to complain.
But there is something else. Politics is not all personality and presidential glitz - no matter what the spin-doctors may claim. Indeed, some of the best performances of the week came from Cabinet ministers such as John Prescott and Robin Cook, who have been excluded too much from the new Labour project. In these tough times, Labour has to function as a party, a movement, and not simply an advertising campaign with a charismatic frontman.
At a very basic level, every government needs its people - in the party, in the tabloid press, in the government. And if it snubs them, or seems to, in favour of apolitical or conservative types, fleeting acquaintances and false friends, it can suddenly find itself bafflingly and frighteningly isolated. As happened last month.
Has it got that message, too?
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