Theresa May has defended her blueprint for post-Brexit relations with the EU as senior Tories lined up to rubbish her "unworkable" agreement with Brussels.

The prime minister told MPs that a good Brexit deal was "within our grasp" and urged MPs to get behind her over the next 72 hours, when she will return to the Belgian capital for a summit where EU leaders will decide whether to rubberstamp the deal.

Conservative Eurosceptics expressed their dissent during a tense Commons statement, when ex-foreign secretary Boris Johnson described it as "complete nonsense" and Iain Duncan-Smith, former Tory leader, said it was not "at all workable" in its current form.

Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson said: "We should junk forthwith the backstop, upon which the future economic partnership - according to this political declaration - is to be based, and which makes a complete nonsense of Brexit."

Ms May said her deal delivers what Mr Johnson wants, telling him: "The future relationship we have set out in the political declaration ends free movement, ends sending vast sums of money to the European Union every year and ends the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the United Kingdom, and it enables us to hold an independent trade policy and to negotiate trade deals around the whole of the world."

