AVOTE of thanks goes to Petri, Janicek, Marti and their compatriots for lubricating the wheels of Scottish democracy at the weekend. It has become possible to travel Scotland, being fed, watered and laundered largely by Poles, Lithuanians and Slovaks. The Labour Party's gathering in Aviemore was no exception.

For the right honourable ministers on leave from government responsibilities to do party business in Strathspey, this was evidence of substantial social change in the country they govern.

Such change came home to me while eavesdropping the parting words of one tribune of the general, municipal and boilermaking classes. "I can't wait to get back to a proper cafe latte, " she said.

The comment reminded me of 21 years ago, when instant coffee granules fuelled the student world. My economics tutor - an Old Etonian who was then adviser to both the Militant Tendency and the National Union of Mineworkers - argued that socialism was about filter coffee for all. Here in Aviemore was proof he was nearly right about at least one thing. (He was also right in arguing Britain would need its coalmines again, but that's another story. ) The mantra for politics, as with business, is that change is the only certainty left. But for Labour in government it is a tricky proposition. Change requires adjusting to the ways the country has moved on since these ministers entered office in 1997, many of them then unfamiliar even with e-mail, and since cocooned in a world where such commonplace changes are handled by their private office staff. Alastair Campbell, the uberspinmeister, admitted

last week that he monstered his way through government for all those years without use of a desktop computer.

Of course, Labour can claim to have wrought change. But its challenge is to track change taking place around it, where it lacks control or comprehension. Three weeks ago, the party was caught unawares by the voters of Dunfermline and West Fife, whose political bonds to workingclass and mining village solidarity have been loosened by social change, raised aspirations, university education, new houses, foreign holidays and the trappings of middle-class life.

Under instructions from Gordon Brown, Labour promised 10,000 more jobs within 10 years. It might as well have been a pledge on Soviet tractor production. Fifers' concerns on February 9 had to do with commuting costs into Edinburgh, the departure of hospital services for distant Kirkcaldy and the retail gap-site in their high street. After Dunfermline, it would be a reasonable bet that one of the next big political issues will be the Tescofication of the high street, forwhich shoppers are at least as culpable as planners and their political masters.

Amid all the speeches made in Aviemore, one of the most perceptive observations was from Lesley Quinn, Scottish Labour's general secretary. Following the West Fife calamity, she argued the party had to be alert to change both in the party's membership and in Scotland. What she did not spell out is that the Conservative Party, having tapped into the British electoral zeitgeist in 1979, paid an extremely high price for failing to keep up with it over the next 18 years. "Being out of touch, " was the most common vox-popped explanation from Dunfermline voters.

Elections are about change and about renewal. Labour's challenge is to avoid a change of government by renewing itself in line with the public mood. Gordon Brown has said it will be more difficult to renew New Labour than to create it in the first place. That is because the momentum of government, as it saps a political party's energies, makes it more difficult to admit and address past mistakes and connect with new demands and concerns.

The chancellor and premier-inwaiting wasn't at Aviemore, despite having said last autumn that he would be travelling the country to listen to the people's concerns. It seems the concerns of the Scottish Labour Party are not a priority.

He must know he needs to find a way of presenting himself as new and fresh, even though he has been at the heart of government for nearly nine years. Oddly, the signs so far are that he is tying himself closer to Tony Blair's worldview than he has through all these years of rowing with his Downing Street neighbour.

He has at least another three years before having to present his changes to the electorate, by which time the Tories will have had time to elaborate on the motherhood-and-apple-pie principles set out by David Cameron yesterday. By that time, and starting this Friday, a new Liberal Democrat leader will also have had time to sharpen the vague position it has presented to the electorate through the Kennedy years.

But others have less time on their hands. They are the Scottish party leaders who are now readying their manifestos for next year's Holyrood elections. Senior Tories, heading into this weekend's Scottish party conference, are increasingly exasperated at the combination of Annabel Goldie's leadership lacking much sense of direction, while David Cameron jettisons political baggage - about NHS patient passports, for one prominent instance - which remains Scottish Tory policy. Murdo Fraser, the deputy leader, this week launched a collection of essays about the Tory future, after much of it had been overtaken by Cameronian events.

Jack McConnell's party platform at the weekend was almost as distant from that of its Westminster leadership. It was perhaps as well that Tony Blair only stayed an hour at the Aviemore resort hotel, as much of the conference debate inhabited another political planet from his.

Blair's speech was about pushing ahead with freeing the individual to make choices in public services. But to Scottish Labour, individuals are LibDem and Tory concepts. Labour is about community and more community.

Jack McConnell has toned down his talk of public service reform, helped by the financial mess in which the English NHS now finds itself and Westminster battles over school reform. He seems relaxed about the Nationalist and Trotskyist threat from the left, and is undecided about the seriousness of a renewed Tory threat from the right.

His new concern, coming out of Dunfermline, is with his coalition partners. And that presents him with an interesting dilemma. Should he close down LibDem distinctiveness by parking his policy tanks on the LibDem lawn - assuming he can find where that is? That is the "triangulation" lesson Tony Blair learned from Bill Clinton, that is now being used by David Cameron against Labour. Or should McConnell differentiate himself from the LibDems, on issues such as nuclear power, an authoritarian crackdown on anti-social behaviour, sticking to the council tax and redistribution of resources to the poorest parts of Scotland?

So far, McConnell's Labour Party seems to prefer the latter route. But it should be careful. It would be unwise to let itself become defined by its junior partner's positioning. Next year's election will be about change and renewal, but that does not mean Labour has to go out of its way to look different.