OPINION: The booklet for this weekend's Labour Party conference features 13 separate photos of its leader, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, and none of any other MP.

Grant Robertson gets in to one picture on the side, but only alongside his leader.

Leaders are always important to political parties, but the degree to which Ardern defines Labour is extreme. This is a party supposedly built on the backs of cooperation between workers and not a single person, no matter how strong their brand is.

Putting too much political stock into a single person can be a dangerous gamble. Just ask the US Democrats, who won two elections with a massively popular leader while losing all other national power in the process.

WARWICK SMITH/STUFF Voters like Jacinda Ardern. It still isn't clear if they like a party that mixes up Whangerei and Whanganui.

The Labour Party is still in need of some rebuilding after nine years of atrophy. A large part of that rebuilding will be standing up convincing and exciting candidates in every single electorate for next year's election.

Labour is of course never going to win Clutha-Southland, or many other deep blue seats. But you get party votes everywhere, and Labour is not strong enough in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch to win whole elections there.

The image of Labour as a party that only has strength in big cities is unfair, but only by a smidgen. The conference is in Whanganui this weekend, a seat Labour thinks it could win next year. This used to be a Labour stronghold - National won it twice throughout the entire 20th century - but has stayed blue since Chester Borrows won it in 2005.

But an email sent out to Labour supporters said the conference was in Whangarei - a town with a somewhat similar name that is hundreds of kilometres away. Mistakes like this - probably made by someone in Auckland or Wellington who would only ever fly over these places - fulfil every stereotype of Labour as an uninterested urban party. Standing uninteresting candidates in hard electorates would set those stereotypes in stone.

Labour are still in the process of selecting their candidates, and could well end up with some exciting newcomers.

But for now it can feel dominated by people who have done their time with the party, with several standing and losing last time.

This makes sense for some people. Young lawyer Steph Lewis in Whanganui increased the party vote by 5000 in the last election, and is exactly the kind of candidate Labour will want to put itself forwards with.

There are some other choices that are less obvious. Rachel Boyack significantly underperformed the party vote in Nelson in 2017 against an exceptionally unpopular minister, but has once again been selected. Unionist and party senior vice president Tracey McLellan has been selected for Port Hills despite being tarnished by her involvement in the assault allegation mess earlier this year. There's something to be said for experience - but also the excitement of the new.

More notable is the absence of flashy well-known people from outside. There is no one of Chris Luxon's stature running for Labour. Some of the most qualified people in the party's orbit have picked other jobs - like new president Claire Szabo, who would have made an excellent MP.

To be fair to Labour, recruiting big names doesn't always work out. John Tamihere's career in Parliament is proof of that. But right now Ardern's modernising influence on the party is not very apparent in its candidates. And it seems unlikely she will exert much influence on safe seat selection races like the one in Dunedin South.

Ardern herself is uncomfortable with how much the party's fate rests on her shoulders. Ironically, fixing that will require her getting even more involved.