Theresa May will try to face down her fiercest critics at a meeting in Parliament on Wednesday after a “heated” debate at her weekly Cabinet meeting about Brexit.

A senior Tory source said Mrs May was "taking the opportunity to talk to colleagues" at the 1922 Committee meeting after Tuesday’s Cabinet was dominated by no-deal preparations and fears among Eurosceptic ministers that Britain will get tied into the customs union indefinitely.

Mrs May was challenged at the meeting by more than half a dozen “impassioned” ministers to set an end-date so Britain does not remain in a customs union indefinitely after a 21-month transition period is over.

Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General, warned that if Britain did not agree a deal and left purely under the terms of Article 50 it would be like being stuck in Dante’s “first circle of hell”.

Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary, is understood to have spoken forcefully about how the UK should not be stuck in an indefinite backstop.

David Lidington, Mrs May’s effective deputy, warned that the electorate would not forgive the Government if it failed to get Brexit right, just as the Tories had not been forgiven for Black Wednesday, when Britain crashed out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992.