Labour would be guilty of an “unacceptable betrayal” if it loses control of any councils in next month's local elections, one of the party’s MPs has warned.

Alison McGovern's comments contradict Labour’s election chief Jon Trickett, who has said the party should only be looking to improve on the general election, when the party trailed the Tories by 7 percentage points.

Ms McGovern, who chairs the Blairite campaign group Progress, says the party should instead be “fighting for hundreds of gains” in English council seats.

She added: “Losing control of a single council at this stage would be an unacceptable betrayal of the people who depend on this party."

Speaking at the launch of the Governing Britain Network, which aims to help Labour learn from the work of its local councillors, she will also lay into what she calls the “pontificating” of some in her party.

“Labour council leaders with power now can do more good in a week than MPs in Westminster can do in a decade of opposition. Politics is about delivery not deliberation,” she said.

“We don’t start from pontificating about our values, come up with ideas, and then try to impose our own dogma. We start from the world as it is, what needs to be done, and then we apply our values to those problems and find solutions.”

The party leadership has already come under fire from moderate MPs for apparently trying to play down expectations for May’s elections.

Former frontbencher Michael Dugher, who was sacked by Jeremy Corbyn at the start of the year, accused Mr Trickett of “getting his excuses in early”.

“History shows that new leaders of the opposition and opposition parties in non-general election years need to do extremely well. We should be looking for exactly that come May,” he told PoliticsHome earlier this month.