David Cameron set the bar high when he wowed the Tory faithful in 2005.
Speaking without notes at that year’s conference in Blackpool, the young moderniser went from outsider to favourite to take over the party, eventually beating David Davis in the leadership race and then entering 10 Downing St five years later.
Could one of the quartet vying for the leadership this time around be on the same trajectory? And while the race then was exclusively contested by white men, could the Tories be about to elect their first black leader?
Like then, each hopeful was given 20 minutes to make their pitch - and all overran their time, with Tom Tugendhat in particular testing the audience’s patience.
“My friends, I get it: You’ve had enough. So have I,” he said, meaning the membership’s impatience to take the fight to Labour. But the line drew mocking laughs from those who wanted him to finish up.
The former security minister sought to emulate Cameron, roaming the Birmingham stage without notes and stressing his credentials as a former Army officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan (although the reflection of an autocue could be seen in his glasses).
James Cleverly was up next. He spoke from a lectern, leaning heavily on his experience in the London Assembly and then as foreign and home secretary, vowing to return to Government “in four short years”.
Robert Jenrick pulled the no-notes trick too, his voice holding up fine after his aides put it about that he had gone hoarse ahead of the speech. Expectation management, perhaps?
The former centrist, now Right-wing hardliner, railed about immigration, diversity in RAF recruitment, net zero and “bloated” foreign aid.
But his signature policy - UK withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) - drew less applause than he would have hoped, and his rather startling political transition left him open to wounding attacks from his rivals - from which they did not shirk.
The combative Kemi Badenoch rounded out the casting session. To her critics, the anti-woke warrior can start an argument in an empty room.
But while Jenrick has led ballots among Tory MPs so far, the shadow business secretary leads in polling among the party members.
And she’s the only one to have broken through with the public, judging by a new Savanta survey which asked voters to describe each candidate in one word.
“Unsure” was the description given for Cleverly, Jenrick and Tugendhat. Badenoch’s was “arrogant”.
But she leant into her reputation, stressing that she bore the scars of policy battles from her time in Government, as well as the memories of growing up in crime-ridden Nigeria.
“When you've experienced that kind of fear, you're not worried about being attacked on Twitter!” she said, adding: “I do not like to fight, but I am not afraid to fight… I do fight for you.”
After two rounds of voting among Tory MPs, the candidates were wooing the members in the next stage of the selection process to find a successor to Rishi Sunak. The MPs will hold two more rounds to leave a final pair standing, for the members to decide between.
So who won the hall over in Birmingham? The two confirmed Right-wingers - Badenoch and Jenrick - both looked back to the 1970s when Labour were in Government and the Tories were foundering in opposition before Margaret Thatcher took them back to power.
But Badenoch’s speech was the more philosophical, and drew the stronger response, as she invoked the battle for ideas waged by Thatcher’s chief ideologue Keith Joseph which ended in a distinct programme for government.
Tugendhat had a strong story to tell in terms of his military service, and he leant on that to launch veiled digs at Jenrick’s policy shifts in attacking “cheap rhetoric” from politicians.
But he came across as low-wattage, failing to measure up to the high-energy marketing and merchandise campaign promoted by his volunteer supporters in Birmingham.
Cleverly too rejected “opportunism” in prospective leaders - but while he stayed behind his lectern rather than roaming the stage, the former foreign and home secretary drew the biggest standing ovation in the hall with a message strong on One Nation unity, and Reaganite optimism.
As frontrunner, Jenrick had the most to lose. His defence of his U-turns - arguing that his values remain unchanged - came up against more authentic sounding speeches from Cleverly and Badenoch.
The charge of inauthenticity was particularly wounding coming on top of a much-criticised campaign video in which Jenrick claimed that UK special forces are killing rather than capturing terror suspects, because of constraints imposed by the ECHR.
That would be a war crime.
It brought to mind the controversy triggered in 1995 when then defence secretary Michael Portillo was accused of exploiting the reputation of the SAS to burnish his own credentials as a future leader. He never really recovered, and was famously thrown out by the voters of Enfield Southgate in the 1997 election.
This time, only Cleverly really came close to capturing the spirit of Cameron’s impassioned 2005 plea for renewal - and he was the only one to apologise for the party losing its way during the past 14 years in power.
Reminiscing about his own journey as a mixed-race child growing up in tough Lewisham, Cleverly vowed to take Tories on a new journey “to get to government, to look to the future and say with one voice that it’s morning again in this great country of ours”.
It resonated well in the hall among a party rank and file that may have learnt from its mistake in choosing an abrasive Right-winger as leader the last time it was given a choice - Liz Truss.
But first Cleverly must navigate the next rounds of voting by Tory MPs.
Tugendhat could well be next to go, and the shadow home secretary will be hoping to scoop up the bulk of his support to ensure the members are not given a Right-Right choice between Badenoch and Jenrick.
