We'd been prepared for a celebration and a coronation. And perfectly justified, too. Indeed, what else to do at the Labour Party's post-election conference, with Mr Tony Blair on extended honeymoon and the Tories still in apparent freefall? Consummate as ever, the platform managers got their defences in early. There might be a few bush fires around the policy margins, perhaps, for example, over university fees. This business of the platform winning all the votes, they explained, was a recent phenomenon.
But since the big project is to reduce the standing and influence of conference itself, any defeats or reversals obviously would not amount to much. So yes, Brighton offered the prospect of a week-long party and slim pickings for the journalist whose pulse quickens only at the prospect of blood on the conference floor. No, you're not mistaken, and, no, you haven't missed it. Mr Blair's homecoming is scheduled for next Tuesday, when an estimated 23,000 people will cram into the Brighton conference centre, and adjoining cinemas, to hear his first conference oration as Prime Minister.
It promises to be some event, a moment of sweet triumph, an opportunity to relive that May night when the fall of Michael Portillo finally obliterated the painful memories of the four defeats that went before.
But watching Paddy Ashdown in action in Eastbourne yesterday, you might have been forgiven for thinking it was he who swept the Tories from power last May.
All week the Liberal Democrats have been agonising over whether they might ultimately enter a fully-fledged coalition with Labour. Amid all the enthusiastic talk about Britain's new consensus, new pluralism, new politics, it seemed churlish to observe that Mr Blair - with his thumping great majority - has no actual need of them, and has not yet invited them.
Mr Ashdown, admittedly, faced a difficult task yesterday. It fell to him to summon the faithful to the challenges ahead, when many felt like resting on their laurels and celebrating that finest post-war electoral success which had given them 46 Commons seats.
He had to spell out his vision of non-tribal politics - to a party which in its heart actively dislikes Labour - while assuring them they would not become mere spear-carriers for the Labour government. In the predictably upbeat aftermath of a leader's speech, he was adjudged to have performed that task with his customary skill.
And Mr Ashdown was right to tell his party there were real prizes to be won from engagement in realpolitik.
While he always maintains he is in politics to do rather than to be something, Mr Ashdown is clearly delighted to find himself on that joint cabinet committee discussing a joint approach to constitutional reform.
But he seemed to be stretching it a bit when he claimed that the results of the Scottish and Welsh devolution referendums represented a triumph for a 100-year Liberal crusade.
Likewise when he avowed he would accept "no glass ceilings" for a party which - for all its relative success - still notched up less than a quarter of the total secured by a broken Tory party comprehensively rejected after 18 years in power.
The stuff of conference speeches to be sure. But it sounded terribly reminiscent of David Steel's famous injunction to his troops in 1983 to go back to their constituencies and prepare for government. And just as unconvincing.
Maybe Mr Blair does intend to follow through with a wholesale realignment in British politics. Perhaps the fears of Old Labour are justified, and we will live to see a national coalition with Mr Ashdown and a Kenneth Clarke sitting around Mr Blair's cabinet table.
However, the acid test for all this newness surely will be Mr Blair's attitude to the fundamental question of proportional representation for Westminster elections.
In the aftermath of that reluctant Welsh "Yes", there are also signs of a Labour hesitation about devolution to the English regions, and suggestions that doubts about the public mood might incline Mr Blair against any early decision on the European single currency.
Without both of those cherished Liberal aspirations, the re-drawing of the constitutional map of Britain might look a good deal less historic than some of yesterday's rhetoric!