Sunday 10 March 2019 9:20 pm | Updated: Monday 03 June 2019 12:52 am

Brexiters slap down reports they could swing behind Theresa May’s deal if she quits by June

The Tory party opened up a new front in its ongoing civil war tonight after senior Brexiters slapped down reports that they could get behind Theresa May’s Brexit deal if she offers her resignation by June.

Brexiters told City PM the reports were part of a disinformation campaign by Downing Street to swing MPs behind the Prime Minister's deal, which will be put before the Commons in another crunch vote on Tuesday.

Bernard Jenkin, a member of the Brexit-supporting European Research Group, said: “The withdrawal agreement is not something that can be subjected to some act of political bargain. I know of no ERG MP who would compromise themselves and the country’s future for some short-term political fix. I think this has come from Downing Street, not the ERG.”

Tonight Downing Street dismissed the allegations as “categorically untrue”.

John Redwood, another Brexit-backing Tory, said reports in the Sunday Times that Brexiters were calling for May to resign “[sounded like] disinformation to me”.

He said the ERG had been “very loyal” since their ill-fated attempt to oust May in a vote of no confidence last November. He said nothing could sway him to vote for May’s deal, which he branded a “surrender document of the worst kind”.

Steve Baker, another senior ERG member, hit back at foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt, who warned there was a risk that we “end up losing Brexit if we get the votes wrong in the next couple of weeks”.

In his rebuttal to Hunt, Baker said: “The people who would stop Brexit should know just this: what you do, you’ll have to do in public now. And everyone will know just what you have done. Stopping Brexit will be on you, not Brexiteers. Don’t kid yourselves otherwise.”

On Tuesday May will attempt to overturn the thumping 230-vote defeat she suffered in January when she first put her Brexit deal to MPs in a meaningful vote. She has promised MPs that if her deal is rejected they will get the chance to vote on whether to rule out no-deal on Wednesday. If no-deal is taken off the table, there will be a vote to extend Article 50, the mechanism that allows the UK to leave the EU.

Tuesday's vote was originally scheduled to be held in February but was pushed back after May asked MPs to give her more time to win changes to the Irish backstop, the policy that is designed to prevent a hard border in Northern Ireland but has earned the opposition of many MPs who fear the UK will be trapped indefinitely in a customs union with the EU.

May is feeling the pressure after a last-ditch trip to Brussels by the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, appears to have ended in failure.

Earlier today Baker and the leader of the DUP in Westminster, Nigel Dodds, wrote in the Sunday Telegraph to warn that delaying Brexit would be a "political calamity" that would mean a "costly delay for business which have prepared to exit on 29 March".

Their concerns were echoed by former Brexit secretary David Davis, who warned that the UK could see its "Trump moment" if politicians failed to deliver Brexit on the scheduled departure date of 29 March – just 19 days away.