Theresa May has left European diplomats in a state of “disbelief” following a series of phone calls to EU leaders in which she made no change to her demands despite her Brexit plan being voted down by a 230-vote margin this week.

Senior EU diplomatic sources said that Mrs May’s unchanged stance was “greeted with incredulity” following a call with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday night.

“It was the same old story - the same set of demands - all unchanged despite the defeat,” said the source with knowledge of the calls.

Mrs May is understood to have repeated the same performance in conversations with the French president Emmanuel Macron, the Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte and the Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, provoking what one source called “diplomatic eye-rolling” in Brussels.

Two other senior diplomatic sources confirmed the contents - or lack of contents - of the calls to the Telegraph. “She hasn’t asked for anything new,” said the second source.

Mrs May’s demands are understood to still centre around either a legally binding time-limit for the Irish backstop; a right for the UK to withdraw unilaterally, or a hard commitment to finalising a trade deal before 2021 to avoid the backstop coming into force.