McDonagh replaced in leadership row

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Mitcham and Morden MP Siobhain McDonagh said she is one of several Labour MPs who have requested leadership nomination papers ahead of this month's annual party conference.

Ms McDonagh said two other MPs involved in the request for leadership nomination papers were Joan Ryan, MP for Enfield North, and George Howarth, MP for Knowsley North and Sefton East. But she added that at the moment she did not want to confirm the names of the other MPs calling for a contest.

A party official acknowledged that the papers necessary for launching a challenge to Prime Minister Gordon Brown had been sought by a "very, very small" proportion of MPs.

Some 71 MPs are needed to trigger a leadership contest. Labour said the number requesting nomination papers was in "single figures".

Ms McDonagh said she had nobody in mind to mount a challenge to Mr Brown but added: "We need a leadership election, I think anybody who wants to stand, should stand. We should have a discussion about what direction the party should be going in."

A Downing Street spokesman said Ms McDonagh had been replaced as an assistant whip by Labour MP Dawn Butler.

The spokesman added that Ms McDonagh had not been fired but "in her conversation with the Chief Whip (Geoff Hoon), she acknowledged that her actions were a resigning matter".

Opposition parties seized on the developments as evidence that Labour was tearing itself apart.

Tory frontbencher Chris Grayling said: "The Labour Party is quite clearly degenerating into a state of civil war. For a Prime Minister to have one of his own whips calling for a leadership contest is unprecedented. We need an early election to get the change Britain so desperately needs."