The Cabinet must tell Gordon Brown it’s time to quit, a Labour MP said today, beginning what is expected to become a clamour for his resignation.

Graham Stringer said that it was time for a “new start” in the wake of the loss of Labour’s 25th safest seat, Glasgow East, in yesterday’s by-election.

The Cabinet should have a “closed and honest discussion with Gordon Brown,” he said. “We need a new start and that can only come from a debate around the leadership.”

Mr Brown faced questions about the prospect of a leadership challenge as he travelled to Labour’s National Policy Forum in Warwick, the venue for crucial talks with the unions over future policy.

Expert View

No-one can possibly overestimate the scale of the disaster which hit Gordon Brown and Labour in Glasgow East

Angus Macleod, Scottish Political Editor

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• Brown's reaction

“My full focus is on taking people through these difficult times,” he said, insisting that he was “getting on with the job”.

Earlier David Cameron called on Mr Brown to call an election. “I think the Prime Minister should have his holiday but then I think we need an election. “I think we need change in this country, and that’s how change should come about,” said the Tory leader.

“What I wonder is whether we can put up with this for another 18 months? Whenever people have had a chance to speak about this Government, whether at the local elections, whether in Crewe, whether in Henley, whether in the London mayor elections and now in Glasgow, they have said ‘Look, we think you’re failing and we want change’.”

Labour had hoped that their appalling run of electoral losses would end in one of Scotland’s greatest Labour strongholds. The SNP’s John Mason, however, ended the party's 84-year grip on the constituency, declaring the victory as "not just a political earthquake, it is off the Richter scale”.

Labour Cabinet Minister’s were forced to accept the severity of the defeat.

Des Browne, Secretary of State for Defence and Scotland, claimed that Margaret Curran, the popular Labour candidate, had run a good campaign but could not fight off the national hostility to the Government.

“She paid the price of a national mood which is directly related to the economic situation,” he said.

“We have to events like this very, very seriously. People do not think that the steps we are taking at the moment are adequately responding to the circumstances that they feel.

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