After the party lost more than 300 councillors across England and control of 18 town halls, some backbenchers have urged the prime minister to step down.

One of them is former health secretary Frank Dobson who described yesterday's cabinet reshuffle as little more than "re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic".

"It's time for change. Real change. Not a 'managed transition' from Blair to Brown or an irrelevant cabinet reshuffle. That is no change at all," he said.

Meanwhile, the Socialist Campaign Group, which represents 25 Labour MPs, said the reshuffles failed to address "the crisis of confidence" among its membership.

"People who marched out to vote for us nearly a decade ago to get rid of the Tories have been turned into a bitter, disillusioned, stay-at-home vote."

"I think it is in the interests of the party that a timetable is set which allows the successor to have a good period of time to get the right team in place.

Speaking earlier to the BBC, former minister Andrew Smith said: "I think the sooner we see a timetable for the orderly transition which the prime minister has promised the better.

"I am voicing the concerns which very many previously Labour supporters said to me on the doorstep. They said this has to be sorted out, things cannot go on like this."

"The prime minister is having to shuffle with an increasingly battered pack. No amount of cosmetic surgery can disguise the fact that this government has suffered a permanent loss of credibility."

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