LABOUR was lurching towards meltdown today over Sir Keir Starmer’s backing for Israeli war crimes, with councillors quitting the party and council leaders telling the leadership that a U-turn is urgently needed.

At a crisis meeting on Monday night, the council leaders warned Sir Keir’s factotum Sue Gray and shadow foreign secretary David Lammy that the Labour leader must walk back his support for Israel’s blockade of food, fuel and water supplies to Gaza, according to an ITV report.

The party has “only days to act” before a tsunami of council resignations begins, with up to a dozen on the brink of quitting in one local authority alone. 

Mr Lammy and Ms Gray failed to soothe concerns over issues including a ban on councillors and MPs attending solidarity demonstrations.

Elected representatives in Manchester and Stroud have already joined those in Oxford in leaving the party, while seven of Labour’s councillors in Leicester have written to Sir Keir demanding a change of line.

They warned that Labour risks alienating Muslim voters in particular, a view also expressed at Monday’s meeting.

The move coincides with an opinion poll revealing that only 9 per cent of Labour voters sympathise with Israel in the crisis, while three times as many back the Palestinians and 35 per cent sympathise with both.

The YouGov survey also found that 39 per cent of young people sympathise with the Palestinians and only 11 per cent with Israel.

Outrage was caused when a nameless Labour source, believed to be a well-known national executive member, was reported to have dismissed the resignations as “shaking off the fleas,” a clearly racist description.

The seven Leicester councillors condemned Sir Keir’s “failure to reject Israel’s policy on the ‘collective punishment’ of civilians in the Gaza Strip, many of whom are innocent young children.”

The councillors called “upon Sir Keir to do the honourable thing by apologising and retracting his comments, otherwise he will be cause irreparable disillusionment and apathy towards Labour amongst the voting Muslim community in Leicester.”

Amma Abdullatif, Manchester’s only Muslim female councillor, resigned “due to Keir Starmer making horrifying comments about Israel having the right to withhold fuel, water, food and electricity from the Palestinians trapped in Gaza, effectively endorsing a war crime.”

Stroud councillor Jessie Hoskin said her decision to leave Labour stemmed from Sir Keir not apologising for backing the collective punishment of Palestinians.

Leading left-wing economics writer Grace Blakeley declared that she was “refusing to vote for Keir Starmer while he supports the use of collective punishment, a war crime.”