Keir Starmer's premiership is on life support. “It feels like an out of body experience, watching your party dying in slow motion,” the Labour MP told HuffPost UK. He was speaking shortly after it was confirmed that Labour had come third in the Gorton and Denton by-election , a seat which the party won by nearly 13,500 votes barely 18 months ago. To make matters worse, the Green Party came, followed by Reform UK , an outcome polling expert Sir John Curtice described as “the worst possible result for the prime minister”. “Can’t wait to hear how this is someone else’s fault,” said one MP. “If they try and blame the local operation or MPs, I’ll lose any respect I have for them. “Polling day was incredibly well-run, but you can’t have a practical response to a crisis of leadership.” Labour spent the past month insisting that only they could beat Reform, only for voters in the Manchester constituency to deliver an almighty raspberry to the PM. If most Labour MPs hadn’t already decided that Starmer’s removal from office was a necessary first step for the party’s recovery, they certainly do now. “He’s burying the Labour Party,” said one backbencher, succinctly. Another senior figure told HuffPost UK: “Keir needs to be removed. The party has to act.” Neil Duncan-Jordan told Times Radio: “If Keir Starmer is seen as a block when you go out and knock on doors – if people say to you, they’ll vote Labour, but they won’t vote Labour if he’s the leader – then he’s the block to us winning. And from a purely pragmatic, electoral strategic view, you have to remove that block “Now, I’m not saying you do that this morning. I’m saying that we need to be serious about winning again. And, if there’s a block to winning again, then we need to look at how we remove that block.” Fellow left-winger Clive Lewis said Starmer was “an interim prime minister”. “How long that interim is will be up to the Parliamentary Labour Party,” he said. “He will not be here for very long, he does not deserve to be here much longer.” Lewis, who said replacing Starmer with Blairite health secretary Wes Streeting would be “more of the same”, added: “We need a radical reset, fundamental change, or we will have a Reform government. “And I’m afraid my colleagues and the rest of the party need to understand that.” Even Angela Rayner, who has tended to keep her counsel since resigning as deputy prime minister last year, went public with a plea for Starmer to change course. “This result must be a wake up call,” she said in a post on X. “It’s time to really listen - and to reflect. Voters want the change that we promised - and they voted for. “If we want to unrig the system, if we want to make the change we were sent into Government to make, we have to be braver.” Green Party candidate and winner Hannah Spencer celebrates at an election rally with supporters. The PM himself appeared deaf to the concerns of his colleagues, insisting that he will not change course and even suggesting that voters had been duped into backing the Greens. In a letter to his fractious MPs, he said: “The Greens were able to capitalise on an endorsement from George Galloway to win over enough voters to push them over the line. “Their willingness to welcome Galloway’s divisive, sectarian politics is a sign that the Greens are not the harmless environmentalists they pretend to be.” “He looks ridiculous and totally disconnected,” said a Labour MP in response. A Green source said: “Starmer is clearly coming to the end of his premiership, one that he has barely been clinging to. He has learnt nothing from the Greens’ stunning victory and once again he is tone deaf. “His only answer now is to smear the voters as extremists who wanted the hope and change that he is failing to offer. It is not the election result or voters who are disappointing, it is his Labour government that is beyond disappointing.” Starmer’s decision to block popular Manchester mayor Andy Burnham from standing to be Labour’s candidate also came in for criticism, but one party insider defended that decision. He said: “Does anyone really believe Andy wouldn’t have invented his own foreign policy for the campaign, particularly after a week of knocking doors? “That would have been the start of a leadership campaign before even being elected, which vindicates Keir’s decision even more.” Another MP who was regularly on the doors in the constituency insisted the Burnham issue “was not mentioned once” by local voters. The MP added: “We shouldn’t read much into the result. Lots of voters who would back us in a general election wanted to send a message to the party by voting Green.” That view was echoed by Chris Hopkins, political research director at pollsters Savanta, who said “we need to be careful not to jump to too many conclusions, and I’d encourage Labour MPs not to overreact to this”. He added: “Yes, it’s bad, but nothing that played out last night should come as a huge surprise, given the national polling and unpopularity of the government. “While the temptation to act and publicly criticise Starmer having seen it play out for real at a by-election must be strong, this does need to not be the straw that breaks the camel’s back in terms of Starmer’s leadership of the party. “Starmer must try to remain steadfast to his cause and maintain party discipline. He’s got to convince his own MPs that what happened last night is not an existential crisis, is not indicative of what could happen in their own seat at the next election and is just a by-election. “Yes, the result is bad on paper but doesn’t really affect Labour’s parliamentary dominance, and could well be completely forgotten about in a few years time.” Nevertheless, Hopkins conceded that Starmer will be in an “incredibly weak” position if May’s elections in Scotland, Wales and England are as bad as Labour MPs fear. “His security is more down to the lack of an obviously challenger, especially while Burnham remains outside parliament, and I guess in that respect Starmer’s decision to block him running is probably remains the right one. “Losing one by-election but keeping your closest rival on the outside looking in is probably an acceptable outcome.” Unfortunately for Starmer, very few Labour MPs are as sanguine about the result as Hopkins. The PM will limp on until May, largely because there is no time to replace him before then. But a set of results even remotely as cataclysmic as Gorton and Denton will surely bring the curtain down on his ill-starred time in No.10. Related... Labour At War As Keir Starmer Faces Calls To Quit After By-Election Humiliation 'It's A Catastrophe': Labour MP Hits Out At Keir Starmer After By-Election Disaster Greens Claim Historic By-Election Victory In Crushing Blow For Keir Starmer