The three veteran politicians agreed a more conservative, combative party focused on narrow partisan issues is not the answer.
The answer, the three veteran politicians agreed, is not to become a more conservative, combative party focused on narrow partisan issues.
Last year, however, the script was challenged by a divisive scandal surrounding Bo Xilai, the combative party chief of Chongqing, whose fall unleashed months of revelations about murder, corruption and political infighting.
It always promised to be a combative party conference, but Labour's political roadshow more than lived up to its billing on Tuesday when Damian McBride's publisher was caught by TV news cameras in an "unseemly" on-air scuffle with a protestor on Brighton seafront.
Mr. Dean, as can be forgotten considering his rise to national prominence as an unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2004 and as a highly combative party chairman, is a medical doctor who, as former governor of Vermont, championed expanding health care coverage.
The penultimate scene is a combative dinner party that might as well be set in the Tower of Babel.
Mr. Trump's election touched off bitter arguments among Democrats over just how politically combative the party should be, and how much it should seek to compete with Mr. Trump's hard-edged version of economic populism.
The essence of his appeal was a return to the pre-oil boom values of his first (1969-74) presidency, a period of stability and social progress in which most of the country's guerrilla movements accepted a government peace programme and the once-combative Communist party regained legal status.
He is energetic and combative but his party was humiliated at the election, leaving it the smallest of the pro-UK parties at Holyrood.
Yet he was in most respects a more combative presence to party officials whose dealings with him are recorded in the files.
Imprisoned for more than three years by the British on suspicion of I.R.A. involvement and the subject of several organized assassination attempts, Mr. Maskey has been known more recently for his unsmiling and combative declarations of party positions.
