By James Cusick
Westminster Editor

Government ministers and Labour backbenchers have already begun private discussions about a potential challenge to Gordon Brown's leadership of the Labour Party, according to the Manchester MP Graham Stringer.

With less than three weeks until the May 22 by-election in the Crewe and Nantwich seat, left vacant by the death of Gwyneth Dunwoody, Stringer is one of the first backbenchers to say openly what many in the Parliamentary Labour Party are saying behind closed doors.

Unless Brown offers relatively quick evidence of how Labour can recover from the drubbing in the May 1 local elections in England and Wales, where they came third behind the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats with just 24% of the overall vote, Stringer's claim that there is now "public loyalty but a private sense of despair" could change to a wider show of discontent.

A repeat of the national swings shown last week would mean Labour losing Crewe and Nantwich. Although Stringer said Labour had no tradition of what he called "regicide", he admitted the parliamentary noise against Brown was increasing in volume.

The prime minister will hope to begin offering his critics evidence of the promise to "listen and learn' when he gives a series of television interviews to be broadcast over the next few days.

Labour MPs, whose number could be reduced by 200 if last week's polls were repeated at the general election, will also want new promises from Brown that the 2008 local elections won't be a repeat of John Major's similar failure in 1995. Two years later, Major left Number 10 after Tony Blair's landslide victory.

Some in the party have said Brown has between now and the party conference in October to "prove himself".

The health minister, Ivan Lewis, said there was a danger Labour now looked like a "new elite". Lewis said it was not only Brown "who had to shape up", but "all of us at Westminster".