The title of last night's Progress debate - "Has David Cameron captured the political zeitgeist?" - was, the chairman explained semi-apologetically, thought up before the polls turned against the Tory leader.
Needless to say, none of the participants objected to a bit of Dave-bashing. Nor were they averse to the chance to analyse the reasons for Labour's current renaissance.
"As Douglas Alexander was saying at the weekend, Gordon is changing the yardsticks by which people are judging what it is to be a strong leader of this country," Andy Burnham, the chief secretary to the Treasury, told the meeting.
Kitty Ussher, to no one's surprise, agreed. "We're in this beautiful situation where I think he's in a lose-lose situation," the economic secretary to the Treasury said.
"I think they're losers and I think we should take 'em on."
She described Mr Cameron as a "PR man" of whom the public had quickly tired. The row over grammar schools this summer was a debate that was irrelevant to much of the public, she added.
"I don't think he's a PR man; he's a con man," Burnham told delegates.
He conceded that Mr Cameron had recognised the importance of climate change, but said he had failed to take his party with him. His policy reviews had thrown up contradictory proposals that had confused the public.
David Aaronovitch said that Cameron had made some misjudgments - particularly his "preposterous" desire to reform the NHS while still speaking for doctors and nurses, a position the Times columnist said was impossible.
But he dismissed Mr Burnham's mockery of Cameron's decision to visit Rwanda, where Tory volunteers were working on aid projects, rather than stay in his flooded constituency.
"Are we saying that our notion of real politics, or realpolitik, is that you have to drop a commitment to Africa to look at someone's wet carpet?"
He added that one of the reasons why Mr Cameron was having difficulty breaking through in the polls was because Gordon Brown had occupied so much traditional Conservative ground, particularly on immigration.
But it will take more than a lone Times columnist to puncture Labour's extraordinary confidence and self-belief in Bournemouth this week.
