Ségolène Royal. Photo: Philippe Huguen
AFP/Getty ImagesHas New Labour missed an opportunity to inject a little much-needed glamour into proceedings here in Manchester?
Next week the Conservatives' shindig in Bournemouth will be graced with a fleeting appearance by the man most likely to be the next US president - Republican senator John McCain. Quite a coup for David Cameron.
Labour too has a slot for international fraternal speakers, which this year - as in 2003 - is ex-US president Bill Clinton.
No-one's doubting Mr Clinton has great pulling power (pun intended) but it appears something of a retread of former glories. Big Bill is very 1990s. And it raises unwelcome analogies with the "dropped baton" transition of Clinton to Al Gore.
Despite Britain's traditional Atlantacist gaze, has the party not missed a trick by failing to invite the extremely telegenic French socialist would-be presidential candidate Ségolène Royal?
Ms Royal is leading the pack - which includes her partner, François Hollande - to challenge the likely conservative candidate Nicolas Sarkozy for the French presidency next year.
Ms Royal is standing on a Blair-esque platform of sounding tough on crime and juvenile deliquents - echoes of "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" - which centre-left politicians often stay away from. And she's only over the channel.
But Perhaps Britain's traditional francophobia, plus memories of Gerhard Schröder's disastrously dull (and translated), speech to Labour conference in 2000, counted against her.
