Colin Challen: Only reconnect... the lesson Labour must take to heart

In the wake of the deceased brand of "New" Labour, this command has taken on a new significance, expressed now as "Only reconnect". We lost touch, millions voted with their feet or with their bottoms. All we need do now is tap the current zeitgeist and recovery is assured. I wonder to what extent this is anything more than a meaningless wish, an expression of how political parties claim they will recharge their batteries before the next fray.

It is, of course, admirable that a kind of political Dunkirk spirit exists after defeat, to lift the eyes of the faithful to a vision of glories yet to come. But the ebb and flow of our political process usually gets the better of ambition. Remember William Hague and John Prescott's promises of long ago to build their respective party memberships into the millions? Remember new Labour's "Big Conversation"? Remember the Conservatives' manifesto title of this year – "An invitation to join the government"? (We didn't know at the time that it was really addressed just to Nick Clegg).

Underscoring these fresh appeals to the collective will is the idea that we were so much in control that we lost control. We locked ourselves in a Whitehall ivory tower, unable to receive messages from the outside world. Representation became a case of representing the government to the people rather than the people in government.

I wonder what beyond the soundbites of today the party's leadership will come up with to genuinely realign the Labour Party with its current and potential supporters.

In the late 1990s, it became clear that post-Clause Four the entire party machinery had to be choreographed to the leader's will. Lionel Blair couldn't have employed a better team of choreographers. What was once loosely described as the party's "civil service" – its organising staff – was purged of most long-serving members (ie, those who were perceived as old and jaded and potentially more loyal to the party per se than the leader).

Eventually, the party's core organisation became the leader's

organisation, more focused on serving his will and the small metropolitan coterie who interpreted his wishes, than it was a members' organisation.

It's not just the Labour Party. The recent attempt by David Cameron to have more control over the backbench 1922 Committee shows the same tendency (along with his candidates' "A" list), and I have no doubt that as Nick Clegg's position becomes more precarious, he too will wish to consider ways of taming the federal instincts of his party.

Like charity, the laudable desire to "reconnect" has to start at home. It must not be a rebranding exercise as so many political relaunches are. The first thing Labour's new leader has to say, to give credence to his desire for change, is that he guarantees we have a commitment to proper Cabinet government, and that the message flows outwards that decision-making will be done in a more collegiate manner.

This commitment would, by the way, help neutralise the positive

perception the public may still harbour that the coalition Government is itself organised on collegiate principles – part of the "new politics" even if it is accidentally so. Accident or not, it reassures people to think that our "masters" appear to want to work together for the greater good.

So far as this Government is concerned, that proposition has yet to be stress-tested. While Labour's leadership campaign has highlighted Labour's grief over its own disconnection, each of the main parties has its own problem. Conservative and Liberal Democrat supporters are being dragged along a journey which offers many divergent routes. So if you don't like the new politics, now is the time to switch off your internet connection, mobile phone and if you still have a landline, have it cut off.

Be sure that if the new politics does not arrive with a knock on your door and a friendly party worker, then there's a good chance it is the product of the same old mass produced marketing exercise and the connection will not be made.

Colin Challen was Labour MP for Morley and Rothwell 2001-2010 and previously worked as a party organiser in West Yorkshire.