Sir Keir Starmer is facing open mutiny from his own backbenchers this morning, as the Peter Mandelson scandal enters its second week. Amid demands for Sir Keir to break his silence and answer crucial questions about his role in the damaging appointment, Labour MPs have begun warning he has just months to save his premiership.

Three MPs have now publicly earmarked next May’s major local and devolved elections as the crunch point for the Prime Minister, with polls suggesting Labour will be given a massive kicking by voters. Left-winger Richard Burgon has now stated that Sir Keir “will be gone” if the next set of local elections are as bad as those within Labour fear.

He told the Today Programme: “Lots of MPs are looking to the elections next May.

“The opinion polls suggest it’s going to be a complete disaster unfortunately and there’ll be elections in the Scottish Parliament, elections in the Welsh Senedd, elections in London, elections right across the country and the opinion polls at the moment suggest that as it stands it’s going be a disaster.

“I think it’s inevitable if May’s elections go as people predict and the opinion polls predict then I think Starmer will be gone at that time.”

Other Labour MPs have joined him in setting up next May as a crisis point for the Prime Minister, including former deputy leadership candidate Rosena Allin-Khan, who said that while Sir Keir has a “huge mandate” he needs to be allowed to “see this out and be judged in May”.

Fellow Labour MP Helen Hayes added: “If those elections don’t go well, then that will be the time to ask questions… about the nature of the leadership and whether things can continue as they are.”

All the current polls suggest Labour will be battered in next year’s local elections, on course to lose power in both Wales and possibly fall to third place in Scotland, both at the hands of Reform UK.

Graham Stringer MP warned yesterday that the PM is “supping in the last chance saloon”.

Launching into a brutal character assassination, the MP blasted: “He seems to be unable to take quick, reasoned decisions and explain them politically. He doesn’t seem to have the basic skills that most politicians have. He’s an example of an intelligent, skilled man, at the top of his profession, whose skills are not transferable to politics. And what happens? You get a government fraying at the edges.

“I have had a lot of conversations with MPs. You don’t start a conversation by saying, isn’t Keir poor, or isn’t he making mistakes? It is given that he’s doing poorly at the job. He’s supping in the last-chance saloon now. He needs to take control of key critical issues. He seems to stand back and leave it up to other people.”

This morning minister Jacqui Smith insisted that the government is not “ignoring our MPs” amid the growing discontent and open questioning of Sir Keir’s position.

Baroness Smith told Times Radio: “I think what we’re doing is getting on with the job that the British people elected us to do, that they elected our MPs to do, that the vast majority of our MPs also believe that a Labour government should focus on. And that’s what I’ve been spelling out.”