16:22

Boris Johnson has promised centrist Conservative MPs he will not go into an election arguing for a no-deal Brexit and would never make a pact with Nigel Farage.

Damian Green, the leader of the One Nation group of 80 Tory MPs, told the Guardian that Johnson “looked [him] in the eye” as he pledged that he party will not shift to endorsing a no-deal Brexit as the Conservatives’ central policy.

Green said he believed Johnson’s reassurances, after he and Gillian Keegan, James Brokenshire and Victoria Prentis all met the prime minister in Downing Street to deliver the message that large numbers of Tory MPs would find a no-deal policy “unacceptable”. Green said:

We went in to say that no deal as the prime aim of government policy would be unacceptable in a manifesto and we were reassured that wasn’t the prime minister’s aim, that he still wants to get a deal now and still thinks that would be the best outcome. He has no intention of putting a no-deal policy in a manifesto. This arose from a meeting of the one nation caucus earlier in the week. It was the principle point and we also wanted to be assured again that the Conservative party wouldn’t do a deal with the Brexit party. We looked each other in the eye. I accept and believe the reassurances. We accept that no deal has to be a possibility and the one nation caucus has by and large always been supportive of the government’s policy. What we want is for that to continue.

Centrist Tory MPs are worried about what would happen if the party had to fight an election before Brexit has happened, after being forced into a three-month extension by the Benn act.

Publicly, Johnson will not concede this is a possibility because he insists Brexit will happen on 31 October but most MPs think this is the most likely scenario – that his government will have to submit to the delay, possibly following a court order, and then he will immediately challenge Labour to an election to be held in late November.