A civil war has erupted within Scottish Labour over the future of Anas Sarwar and Sir Keir Starmer following its Holyrood election rout.

Alloa and Grangemouth MP Brian Leishman became the first parliamentarian to demand the Scottish Labour leader quits over last week’s losses.

He also warned that the party faced the threat of ‘electoral oblivion’ after it was reduced to only 17 MSPs.

A Labour peer also savaged the party’s election campaign and called on Mr Sarwar to ‘learn from his mistakes’.

A series of Scottish Labour MPs have also called for Sir Keir to quit, joining many of their colleagues down south, despite him insisting he intended to cling onto his job.

Mr Leishman said Mr Sarwar and his deputy Jackie Baillie should ‘absolutely’ both quit.

He told BBC Radio Scotland: ‘There’s talk of a national wave, now don’t get me wrong, Keir Starmer came up very, very regularly on the doorsteps, there has been a national wave against Starmer.

‘But if you want to take credit for going from two Scottish Labour MPs in the general election to 37, then you’ve got to say that was a national wave. Anas and Jackie can’t take the credit for that but then look at us being reduced to 17 MSPs and not hold up their hands and be accountable and responsible for that.’

Under fire: Anas Sarwar and Jackie Baillie at Labour’s manifesto launch

He said that the electoral strategy ‘was not there’, and added: ‘If Scottish Labour don’t get back to our radical values and actually offering something different for the Scots that need it, then we are facing electoral oblivion.’

Mr Leishman added: ‘We’ve got to get away from the cult of personality and actually look at policies and politics that will meaningfully change people’s lives.’

Mr Sarwar has accepted a ‘share of responsibility’ but blamed a ‘national wave’ across the UK for Labour’s worst ever Holyrood election. Earlier this year, he demanded Sir Keir’s resignation amid questions over the Peter Mandelson scandal.

Sir Keir said that he had spoken to Mr Sarwar at the weekend but refused to reveal any details of the conversation.

Labour peer Lord George Foulkes told the Mail that Mr Sarwar resigning ‘is not the solution’.

He said: ‘I thought Anas’s performance in the campaign was good, I was at an eve of poll speech and he was very good and answered questions very well. My only concern was that we didn’t have a bold enough manifesto. I wanted to see much bolder stuff.’

On Mr Sarwar’s call for the Prime Minister to quit, he said: ‘One mistake was attacking Keir Starmer because that implied this election was about what was happening at Westminster, instead of replacing the SNP, and he shouldn’t have done that.

‘But I don’t necessarily think it is going to help now to change him, I think what he needs to do is to learn from his mistakes.’

Former Labour MSP Neil Findlay has also blamed the Scottish Labour leadership for the result.

He said: ‘Sarwar and Baillie were bound at the hip with Starmer until the disaster was staring them in the face. They had complete control of the party, a record budget and picked their favoured candidates — own it.’

Writing in the Daily Record yesterday, Mr Sarwar said: ‘Over the days, weeks and months ahead, the Labour Party in Scotland and across the UK will have to reflect seriously on this result. We have to listen. We have to learn the lessons.

‘We have to understand not just where we fell short, but why. We have to hear what voters were telling us, including when the message is uncomfortable.’

Meanwhile, Labour MSP Paul Sweeney has told the BBC that there should be an ‘agreed approach’ to what would trigger another independence referendum. He said: ‘We need to get beyond this paralysis to allow politics to function properly again in Scotland, so perhaps it does need to be settled in some sort of convention.’

But Scottish Tory deputy leader Rachael Hamilton said: ‘When will Labour learn to stop pandering to the SNP’s incessant efforts to break up the UK?’