By James Cusick, Westminster Editor

Lord Kinnock is being courted by key members of the cabinet to deliver the uncomfortable truth to Gordon Brown that he has to put Labour's future before his own and resign as prime minister.

Lord Kinnock, who led the Labour party between 1983 and 1992 general elections to the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher and then John Major, has been asked to first tell the prime minister privately that he has probably lost the support of the parliamentary party and that his support among the rank and file has also diminished.

But if Brown refuses to go and remains convinced he can turn things around, Lord Kinnock has been asked to make a public appeal to Brown that will represent the weight of key cabinet members and other members of the government.

One junior minister said: "We are asking Neil to do what senior members of the cabinet are obviously too scared to do, and that is to confront Gordon with the hard reality of where we're at now. We cannot have him march us to certain defeat at the next general election."

So far Kinnock has remained silent on the issue. The pleas to Kinnock are said to be only one of a number of options being considered. One MP said: "It is no longer a question of whether Gordon is the right person to lead the Labour Party. The discussion is about the strategy that would encourage him to go with some dignity, or if necessary, to minimise the damage that would be caused if we had to resort to pushing him out. But the pretence of everything being business as usual' has to stop."

The former home secretary, David Blunkett, warned yesterday that changing leader would change nothing with the "big challenges over food and fuel prices, over the world economy" still remaining.

The justice secretary, Jack Straw, also said he wanted to see Labour close ranks and unite behind Brown and dismissed suggestions that he could become a caretaker leader in the event of a Brown exit.

An orderly resignation by Brown, barely in office a year after being elected unopposed, still looks unlikely.

The scale of the Glasgow East by-election defeat is said to have finally broken the resolve of some in the cabinet ranks that a leadership challenge would be more damaging than Brown being given more time to relaunch himself and then see if Labour's poll position improved.

With the latest ComRes poll showing Labour trailing the Tories by a record 22%, pointing to a Tory landslide and a 236 majority for David Cameron after the next general election, some MPs are forecasting a steady stream of autumn and winter resignations by junior ministers who will openly say they are no longer prepared to serve in a government led by Brown.

One experienced minister said: "That is the messy option and it will damage any chance we have of limiting the scale of the coming defeat."

But at the start his summer holiday in Suffolk yesterday - after a surprise walkabout in London with Senator Barack Obama, the Democrat presidential candidate - the PM seemed to determined to stay in Number 10 and dismissed all talk of challenges to his leadership.

He said: "I'm getting on with the job and I think its important that in difficult economic circumstances we take the right decisions."