LABOUR has to adopt a fundamental change in its attitude to voters to convince them it is on their side, Lord Prescott has insisted.

The former Deputy Prime Minister also branded the election result in Scotland "disastrous" and criticised the leadership candidates' emphasis on, what he dismissed as the meaningless term, aspiration.

His remarks came as a former ministerial colleague Kim Howells warned that the party could "dwindle to a very small numbers of MPs" if it did not adopt radical change and come up with some new ideas.

Lord Prescott decried Ed Miliband's so-called "35 per cent strategy", whereby the party leadership believed it could secure power by simply appealing to its core vote.

"In reality," explained the Labour peer, "that traditional vote did not swing to use because they had no confidence in us; it was partly a protest vote."

The peer argued that the party had to promote its values in a modern setting, saying: "We have got to make a fundamental change in our attitude and we have got to get across to people we are on their side; we failed to do that for whatever reason."

Lord Prescott gave as one example an idea Mr Miliband, he claimed, had rejected; a "rent to buy" proposal that would have allowed young people to buy a house without putting up a deposit or paying stamp duty up front.

"Now, that's a radical change; that meets the needs of lots of people, who need housing," declared the peer. "It looks as if we're on their side; we refused to do that. Just one example, where we didn't reflect what is the need of many people in housing."

The former Cabinet Minister, who is backing frontrunner Andy Burnham for the leadership, attacked the use by some of the candidates of the term aspiration. It was the lack of promoting this value that some said cost Mr Miliband the election.

But Lord Prescott suggested it was meaningless. "What the hell does that mean, aspiration? I hear a lot of the candidates talking about it; they've clearly got aspiration but what the heck does it mean?"

Earlier Mr Howells, who served in Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's governments, branded Mr Miliband's leadership "dull".

The former MP for Pontypridd said: "It's probably at least as bad as under Michael Foot's leadership when we were in real dire straits.

"If the Labour Party doesn't come up with fresh thinking, with some radical analysis of what's going on in society and what people need out of society, it could well dwindle to a very small number of MPs."