So, there goes Tom Watson, seemingly in an attempt to allow the Labour leadership to put paid to an increasingly tangled controversy. Its component parts run as follows: the Unite union; its alleged attempt to cook the selection of the Labour candidate in Falkirk; the fact that the union's favoured hopeful in that seat is a close Watson aide; claims that Unite has its sights on up to 40 other seats; the fact that the union's leader, Len McCluskey, was once Watson's flatmate; and more.

Much of this is soap opera of the kind that can be found in spades in any political party. But what makes it so highly charged is the fact that it speaks volumes about a left/right faction-fight that now seems to be reaching its peak – hence the line in Watson's shadow cabinet resignation letter that claims that "it is better for you [Ed Miliband] and the future unity of the party that I go now".

Watson, let us not forget, was campaign co-ordinator for the next general election – an increasingly impossible role to carry out when he was a) so associated with Unite and its quest to tilt the party towards the old left, and in any case, b) the object of an animus from the right of the party that goes back to his role in the departure of Tony Blair.

The heat that Watson has attracted has only ever been a symptom of two underlying problems, which remain.

First, there is the fact that the Labour leadership and shadow cabinet are not generating nearly enough noise, and thereby creating a media vacuum. At the moment, Miliband tends to make speeches that may or may not attract much attention, as well doing PMQs and occasionally piping up on whatever issues are deemed to deserve his attention. Many of his colleagues are borderline mute. The space is filled by an increasingly surreal pantomime that is a laugh to write about, but has long since drifted away from anything remotely real.

'A party machine essentially run along the same lines as it was before the second world war no longer cuts it.' Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian

Witness the columnist and activist Owen Jones having an argument on TV with a backbench Labour MP, and the whole thing flaring to life on the Twittersphere as if it was a moment of political significance akin to Lenin's arrival at the Finland station. Note, also, a completely weird episode in which the Telegraph pundit Dan Hodges (who demanded Watson's exit only 72 hours ago) wrote an online column claiming that Miliband was demanding that Jones should be left alone, and was then invited on to BBC2 to tell all.

Fair play to Jones and Hodges: they are both very readable voices with much to say about the state of modern Labour politics. But if they are getting more attention that most shadow ministers, what does that tell you? Answer: Labour is leaving the political foreground dangerously empty, which is also why the Unite brouhaha and every utterance from Len McCluskey have acquired such clout.

Second, there is the fact that a row over selections between the Blairite right and the Unite-led left says a huge amount about Labour's moribund model of organisation. If constituency Labour parties are open to abuses from those factions of the party – the Westminster-endorsed parachute in the case of the former; the packing of local memberships when it comes to the latter – that's simply more proof that Labour cannot go on with a dwindling membership, and processes that tend not to reach beyond the walls of damp meeting rooms on Wednesday evenings.

Sooner or later, the people in charge of the party will have to face facts: the orthodox mass party is a dead idea, and Labour will have to reorganise itself and be reintroduced to a pluralistic, politically sophisticated world. A party machine essentially run along the same lines as it was before the second world war no longer cuts it: the Falkirk controversy is merely the latest evidence. On Tuesday, I advocated open primaries as a way out of this mess: a remedy also proposed by the Times and that great leftist Daniel Hannan MEP. It's the right solution.

Meanwhile, we await some decisive word on all this from the Labour leader himself. It's pretty obvious that any words – no, action – need to be bold, loud and imaginative, not least because the absence of such qualities in current Labour politics is part of the reason the party has ended up in this mess. And so to the obligatory conclusion: naturally, don't hold your breath.