As a political journalist in my 20s, I covered the end of the last Labour government, and clearly remember their raw conference of 2009. That government was limping towards the end, with an impatient younger generation of politicians straining at the leash.
In fact, that rank of bright young things included Andy Burnham: the health secretary back then, and the focus of so much vitriol this week. With polls doing the rounds in September 2009 showing then that Gordon Brown was leading Labour to defeat unless something drastic was done, the heaving bar at the Brighton conference venue was a sweaty throng of conspiratorial chatter. There were teams jockeying to replace Brown, but also those looking to protect him at all costs.