Good times just around the corner?

By Nick Robinson
BBC political editor, in Blackpool

The battle to succeed Mr Howard invigorated the conference

So goodbye then Michael Howard.

You delivered an emotional farewell to your party conference - tears filled the eyes of some of those listening.

They knew that you'd given your all - that you'd given them dedication and discipline but also yet another defeat. Some Tories now believe that your greatest gift to them came this week.

You admit it was a gamble to turn your conference into a spectacular seaside show of competing political ambitions.

Into the shadows?

It was a show that thrust your protege David Cameron into the spotlight and David Davis - the man you've never much got on with - ever so slightly into the shadows.

Only you can know whether that was what you had in mind.

Now your party has a much bigger gamble to make: whether to back Mr Davis despite his performance this week; or to back Ken Clarke, despite the divisions he's created in the past; or David Cameron, or Liam Fox, despite their inexperience; or even Malcolm Rifkind, despite his low level of parliamentary support.

The show is, of course, far from over. It has many acts still to run starting next week back in Westminster.

David Davis still has many more MPs backing him than all the other candidates.

The question is whether he has peaked.

That will depend in part on whether he can raise his game and in part on whether the other candidates can silence the doubts about them.

All that is clear after this extraordinary week is that there is a powerful "stop Davis" camp.

There are many who hope that, like Portillo in 2001, Clarke in 1997 and Heseltine in 1990, David Davis will turn out to be a frontrunner who will not be first over the finishing line.

You, Mr Howard were the fourth Tory leader to lose to New Labour.

You and your party can only hope that you turn out to be the last.