FORMER Labour MP Kim Howells warns that Labour could "dwindle to a very small number of MPs" if it does not adopt "radical" change.

Uber-Blairite Howells is a former chair of Labour Friends of Israel who has called for the end of the party's relationship with the trade unions and the "humane phasing out" pf any commitment to socialism.

So, Blairite has-been demands Labour change its spots. You might be forgiven for concluding "nothing to see here."

But it's not that simple.

The radical changes Howells has in mind would in all likelihood be a suicide note for the party.

To gravitate towards the Tories because "most of the creative thinking at the moment is coming from the right" is not going to work - statistics show Labour has in any case not lost much of its Blair-era support among the better off.

It is the millions of disillusioned working-class voters who have opted to stay at home or vote SNP, Green or Ukip who are the party's biggest problem.

But Howells is right that not one of the Labour leadership candidates has faced up to the far-reaching changes the party needs.

If it looks as if "most of the creative thinking is coming from the right" it is because the left is on the defensive.

In the face of the ruling-class assault on ordinary people's living standards and rights at work that's hardly surprising.

Defending the NHS from profiteers, locally accountable schools from the academies drive and working people's right to decent wages and secure contracts are very real priorities.

But look a little further from Westminster and it's not so clear that "nobody is thinking in a radical way" on the left.

The People's Assembly marks the first real Britain-wide effort to link community activism and campaigning with the expertise and industrial muscle of trade unions. 

Initiatives such as Unite Community are making trade unionism relevant again to whole sections of society who have not traditionally been organised, whether that means unemployed people or simply those working in weakly organised sectors. 

The "social movement unionism" we're seeing from the National Union of Teachers, with its focus on enabling local people and parents to get involved in standing up for their children's education, is a dramatic and innovative approach to resistance that it paying off. 

Labour's problem is that it is not connected to these social movements.

And without a mass movement, the Labour Party is not going to win. Tony Blair's gamble, that the party could hoover up votes on the right without losing its support base, has proved as unwise in electoral terms as it was morally contemptible.

Arguing over whether individual manifesto commitments lost it the election is beside the point.

We know that Ed Miliband's proposals for a mansion tax, an energy price freeze and a higher rate of tax on the richest were popular policies because polls show this overwhelmingly.

We also know a majority want the utilities and railways renationalised and the abolition of Trident. 

But the political class in Britain is so discredited from expenses scandals, shady links to private-sector companies and broken promises that it hardly matters what you put in a manifesto. People won't read it and if they do they are unlikely to believe it.

Labour needs to re-earn people's trust - not through soundbites or consultations or policy documents, but by embedding itself in the resistance. 

If the Labour Party is there with workers on picket lines, is at foodbanks and jobcentres, is engaged in local People's Assembly groups - in short, if it proves that it is on the side of working people when it matters - its future is bright.

But if it retreats into navel-gazing when workers face the toughest Tory onslaught for decades it may not have a future at all.