Labour is very lucky that virtually no one outside the party is paying any attention to the contest for the deputy leadership. With a couple of exceptions, the campaigning by the six declared candidates has been self-indulgent, a reminder of why Labour was unelectable for so long.

If you talk to almost any senior Labour figure not directly involved, you will hear despair at the pandering to the prejudices of party activists and union members.

Such an appeal to the minority of party and union members, rather than to voters generally, often happens in internal party elections. That is why, in US primaries, Democratic candidates have to play to the party’s liberal, union-dominated wing, and why it is hard for any Republican who is not antiabortion and socially conservative to be nominated. Then, after the primaries, the presidential candidate has to tilt to the centre, in rhetoric at least, to win the backing of voters who do not share the views and passions of the activists who vote in primaries.

Even in US primaries, there is usually an electability barrier that halts popular mavericks, such as Howard Dean in 2004. But this does not apply to the Labour deputy leadership because the post has no national significance. The winner may, or probably may not, become Deputy Prime Minister, an only occasional post, or be No 2 in a Gordon Brown government.

The contest does, however, say a lot about the contenders’ views of the attitudes of party and union members. We have had attacks on high City salaries, private equity firms, and President Bush, coupled with calls for stronger union rights and an independent foreign policy. The latter is a meaningless phrase, meant as criticism of Tony Blair’s foreign policy. That may be what left-wing activists like to hear, but it is not the way to win a fourth term.

No wonder John Hutton made a thinly coded criticism of the “old cliché-driven rhetoric” of earlier debates about pay, and why one of his close allies said he thinks the contest is in danger of becoming a “soft-Left auction”. Charles Clarke criticised candidates last night “who prefer backroom conspiracy and plots to open discussion of the policy challenges”.

Mr Brown has begun to get the tone right. Of course, there will be a change in approach when he takes over. That is both inevitable and desirable. Equally, as Mr Clarke and Alan Milburn argue, there needs to be a public debate. A serious challenge now looks unlikely. But, even if there is no contest, Labour is rightly planning for hustings around the country, which Mr Brown will attend, in what he is calling a great debate.

If a return to old Labour is the way to defeat, new Labour has to change. The brand is tarnished: as Mr Clarke said: “For all its great achievements, new Labour has now become associated, fairly or unfairly, with a nexus of media-handling, perceived corruption, lack of openness and self-absorption, which the public finds distasteful”. Reinventing Labour does not, however, mean that that there are easy alternatives on foreign and domestic policy. There are not. Mr Brown knows that. Some of the deputy leadership candidates still pretend otherwise.

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