Is brand ''Labour'' depreciating so rapidly in electoral value that the party's long-term future is now in serious jeopardy?
This week's hostilities both outside and inside the Labour caucus weren't just about the post-election future of David Cunliffe or, to be exact, the lack thereof.
It was another exchange of volleys from Labour's parliamentary wing fired in the direction of the wider party's left faction, who take very strong exception to the caucus pressuring Mr Cunliffe to give up the leadership.
But Labour's really serious underlying problems run a lot deeper than that.
A decade or so ago, Labour was still seemingly indestructible.
Over preceding years, Labour regularly suffered from mass desertion by voters and was consequently written off, only to recover Phoenix-like within a relatively short period of time, such was the two-party monopoly under a first-past-the-post electoral system.
Labour's present parlous state is unprecedented, however.
Much has been made of last Saturday's capture by the party of a paltry 24.7% of the party vote, Labour's worst result since 1922.
But it's only half the story.
In 1922, Labour was a new political movement on the way up, not a tiring one with distinct signs of being on the way down.
Labour ever more resembles a classic 1950s-style department store selling a broad range of general merchandise, but not stocking the specialist goods its declining number of customers actually want to buy.
In trying to satisfy everyone, the store is pleasing no-one.
Shoppers are instead getting what they want from smaller, more flexible competitors enjoying a deregulated market.
To make matters worse, the store's staff keep ordering outdated or hard-to-sell items liked by only a few very elderly browsers and people from ethnic groups.
Meanwhile, faulty market research has the store's management targeting a clientele which no longer exists.
Yet, another far more modern department store across the road is raking in the cash like never before.
That is because National knows what its market likes.
Labour believes in supplying goods its customers ought to like for their own good - and is then surprised when they reject them.
Take the introduction of a capital gains tax.
Labour sought to persuade voters they would not be paying the tax.
It then boasted about how much the tax would raise, thereby convincing voters they would end up paying the tax.
National plies the ''politics of aspiration'' in the belief that most people seek to be upwardly mobile. Labour has reverted to the ''politics of envy'' under David Cunliffe.
His speeches and rhetoric carry heavy ''class war'' echoes.
He has endeavoured to drive a wedge between upper-income earners and everyone else by promising tax rises for the well-off.
National, meanwhile, talks about tax cuts.
Mr Cunliffe has also been talking class-war language to push Labour leftwards, as did predecessor Phil Goff.
In doing so, they have ignored the huge structural change in the economy over the past 30 years or so.
Traditional catchments of Labour voters - such as manufacturing workers - have shrunk markedly.
Goods-producing industries comprised 35% of the economy in 1972.
That had fallen to just 22% by 2010.
In contrast, finance, insurance and business services grew from 14% to 29%.
Meanwhile, many new jobs have sprung up in accommodation, food services, health services and retailing.
Many of these jobs are deunionised.
The contact between industrial labour and political labour has thus weakened considerably.
Labour is simply not connecting with the check-out operator in Levin, or the rest-home worker in Carterton.
But neither is Labour making much headway with its traditional blue-collar workers either.
They now view Labour as a party for the politically correct.
Take Labour's law and order policy.
This has a vision where ''the rights of all are celebrated and upheld''.
That presumably includes criminals.
A major feature of the policy is a long list of steps for action to eliminate violence against women, which also turns up in other quite separate policies.
But never mind.
The rest of the law and order policy variously promises to repeal National's GCSB legislation to protect New Zealanders from mass surveillance; ensuring the Pike River families receive their rightful compensation; creating a crime of corporate manslaughter covering workplace deaths; and maintaining the lower blood-alcohol limit while driving, which Labour had managed to get enacted.
This is hardly your typical law and order policy - and is long way away from National's approach of appealing to voters by setting specific targets for the further reduction of crime and reoffending.
But here lies a crucial difference between the two parties.
When it comes to major policy areas - so-called essentials such as law and order, education, heath, welfare and so on - National is focused on the consumer and results, be it the number getting elective surgery, the numbers coming off benefits or national standards.
Labour sides with the producers, be they teachers, nurses or Winz case managers.
Unlike National, which gets kudos for being seen to be delivering on the ''fundamentals'', Labour gets no brownie points and probably the reverse, given the stereotypical view with which public servants are regarded by those who live outside the capital.
Now Labour looks like promoting the seeming epitome of one to become its leader.
Any reservations, however, regarding Grant Robertson's suitability for the job - that he is too Wellington-oriented, too much the backroom apparatchik, that he lacks the X-factor, that New Zealand is not ready for a gay prime minister - pale into complete and utter insignificance.
Such is Labour's plight, his elevation is no longer a matter of choice.
It is a matter of absolute necessity. Only one other MP can save Labour from being further savaged by its most dangerous enemy - itself.
That MP is David Shearer. This week he revealed he has the steel when he wants to show it by defying Mr Cunliffe.
But Mr Shearer has yet to show he would do a far better job second time around.
That leaves Mr Robertson to carry out mission impossible.
• John Armstrong is The New Zealand Herald political correspondent.
