A dozen former Conservative ministers including Boris Johnson, David Davis and Dominic Raab are urging Tory MPs to vote down Theresa May’s deal and leave the European Union on World Trade Organisation terms.

The group – including eight former Cabinet colleagues of Theresa May – urges the Prime Minister to have one last go at persuading the EU to drop the Irish backstop which threatens to keep the UK in the customs union indefinitely.

The news came as Tory MPs will on Monday raise concerns about a secretive committee run by unelected officials with the power to write new laws affecting Britons for years after Brexit as a result of Mrs May’s deal.

A group of farmers who export hundreds of millions of pounds of agricultural produce to and from the EU warn in a letter to Monday's Daily Telegraph that Mrs May's deal could leave the UK “in limbo for many, many years with damaging uncertainty”.

Separately Stuart Wheeler, the millionaire spread betting millionaire, warned that if Tory rebels prevented Brexit “they will have gone a very long way towards putting Mr Corbyn into Downing St, perhaps within weeks, not to mention losing their own seats”.