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Keir Starmer is increasingly isolated as Cabinet colleagues refuse to back him and a Labour MP publicly demanded the Prime Minister's resignation. Hartlepool MP Jonathan Brash became the first of Sir Keir's backbenchers to call on him to quit, as the crisis over Peter Mandelson's appointment as US ambassador refused to die down.

The backbencher said: "I don't think anyone reasonably expects the Prime Minister to lead the party into the next election." Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden was the latest senior minister publicly to cast doubt on the Prime Minister's judgement, following rebukes from Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper.

There may be more damaging revelations to come next week, when MPs question Morgan McSweeney, the former Downing Street chief of staff and Sir Keir's closest adviser, who championed Mandelson's candidacy for the role. On Thursday, the Commons Foreign Affairs committee will quiz civil servant Cat Little, permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office, over reports officials discovered a document from January 2025 that recommended against giving Mandelson security clearance.

Mandelson was granted clearance by the Foreign Office anyway, and began work in Washington weeks later. Sir Keir has insisted he was not told about the vetting verdict until April this year, and sacked Sir Olly Robbins, the former permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office.

Mr McFadden declined to back the Prime Minister when asked three times if the sacking was justified. He told Times Radio: "Look, it's the Prime Minister's judgement." But he later issued a plea for Labour MPs to back Sir Keir, and said: "I think we've had far too many changes to prime minister in the UK in the last decade. It hasn't done the country much good."

It came after Mr Miliband said Mandelson "should never have been appointed" and Ms Cooper criticised No 10's attempts to find a diplomatic role for Matthew Doyle, Sir Keir's former head of communications.

Doyle, a Labour member of the House of Lords, has since been suspended after it emerged he supported a council candidate who had been charged with indecent child image offences.

Tories kept up the assault in the House of Commons, where Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch accused Sir Keir of misleading MPs and demanded his resignation.

Skirting around Commons rules that bar MPs from accusing each other of lying, Mrs Badenoch said: "I cannot accuse the Prime Minister of deliberately misleading the House, but everyone can see what has happened here. This was not due process.

"Everyone knows the price of misleading the House. Will the Prime Minister finally take responsibility and go?"

Sir Keir insisted he was not to blame, and repeated his assertion that nobody had told him United Kingdom Security Vetting (UKSV), the government body responsible for making recommendations about security clearance, had raised concerns about Mandelson.

The Prime Minister may escape another grilling next week, after Labour MPs were told to expect the prorogation of Parliament on Tuesday. This means the end of the current parliamentary session, and MPs will not meet again until the King's Speech on May 13, when the Government will set out its plan for the next 12 months.

It means Sir Keir will avoid his regular Wednesday afternoon question-and-answer session. However, he faces local, Scottish and Welsh elections on May 7 where Labour could suffer huge losses.

Labour MPs are increasingly voicing concerns in public that were previously expressed behind closed doors. Polly Billington, vice chairwoman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, refused to say she trusted Sir Keir's judgement when pressed repeatedly in a BBC interview. She said: "Prime ministers do make mistakes because prime ministers are human."

Anas Sarwar, leader of Scottish Labour, called on Sir Keir to resign in February, but no Labour MP had publicly issued the same plea until Wednesday.

Downing Street said Sir Keir was confident he had the full backing of the Cabinet, and it is wrong to suggest everyone expects him to quit before the next election.

But a spokesman for Mrs Badenoch said: "What you're seeing is a slow drip, drip of the Labour Party moving against the Prime Minister."