Pro-remain Tory MPs said last night the party was being taken over by former Ukip members amid fresh infighting over Brexit.

Former ministers Nick Boles and Anna Soubry said a ‘purple Momentum’ was gaining control of some local Conservative associations and leaving their sitting MPs facing the threat of deselection.

It came as Theresa May was warned that a dozen ministers will resign by the end of the month unless she agrees to postpone Brexit to prevent a No Deal scenario.

Miss Soubry yesterday said the Conservative Party was ‘broken’ as the Prime Minister struggles to reconcile the warring factions.

Anna Soubry yesterday said on the BBC the Conservative Party was ‘broken’ as the Prime Minister struggles to reconcile the warring factions

‘They are now in control of the associations. We have got a “purple Momentum”, I’m not exaggerating,’ she told the BBC

The former business minister, who has been campaigning for a second referendum, said even MPs loyal to Mrs May were facing the prospect of being unseated because of the arrival of hundreds of ex-Ukip supporters in their constituency associations.

‘They are now in control of the associations. We have got a “purple Momentum”, I’m not exaggerating,’ she told the BBC.

‘I spoke to a colleague of mine and he was telling me that he is now being threatened with deselection because he voted for the Prime Minister’s deal.

‘In his association they have had 80 new members in about 80 days and they are all ex-Ukip members, they are not Conservatives.

Former ministers Nick Boles (right) and Anna Soubry (left) said a ‘purple Momentum’ was gaining control of some local Conservative associations and leaving their sitting MPs facing the threat of deselection

It came as Theresa May was warned that a dozen ministers will resign by the end of the month unless she agrees to postpone Brexit to prevent a No Deal scenario

Other pro-Remain Tory MPs, including Miss Soubry, Dominic Grieve, Antoinette Sandbach Mark Pawsey and George Freeman, were also being targeted, he claimed

‘Instead of standing up to this, like Labour should have stood up to Momentum, we are falling into the same trap. Both main parties are broken.’

What did Theresa May's motion say? MPs threw out Theresa May's latest Brexit motion by 303 to 258 - a majority of 45. The motion was intended to reinforce Mrs May's negotiating position by showing there was a majority for the Brexit deal in the Commons if the Irish border backstop is re-written. It said MPs still backed the vote on January 29 which spelt this out. The problem for the PM tonight is that on January 29 MPs also voted against no deal - creating a deep split inside the Tories about whether her motion also reflected this. The motion read: 'That this House welcomes the Prime Minister’s statement of 12 February 2019; reiterates its support for the approach to leaving the EU expressed by this House on 29 January 2019 and notes that discussions between the UK and the EU on the Northern Ireland backstop are ongoing.' In the end, both Leave and Remain MPs abstained on the motion - consigning the PM to another humiliating defeat. Advertisement

Miss Soubry was backed up by Mr Boles, who said Mrs May was allowing zealots to run the party.

The fellow former business minister has been facing a deselection attempt in his Grantham and Stamford constituency since he threatened to resign the party whip if the Prime Minister pursues a No Deal Brexit.

Mr Boles said a ‘systematic operation of infiltration’ by Ukip was taking place.

He said the party membership in his seat had increased from 400 to 500 in the past year.

Other pro-Remain Tory MPs, including Miss Soubry, Dominic Grieve, Antoinette Sandbach Mark Pawsey and George Freeman, were also being targeted, he claimed.

Mr Boles told The Times: ‘You have already seen one great party taken over by a sect and destroyed. I worry that the Conservative Party is on the brink. It is happening in the constituencies and it is also happening in the parliamentary party.

‘The one advantage Labour has is that their parliamentary party is quite sane, though the front bench is controlled by the zealots. In our case we have somewhere between 30 and 80 zealots. They are more ideologically fixed than the Maastricht rebels were and are greater in number.’

He added: ‘A bit of pepper in the soup is never a bad thing, but I’m not happy for my party to be run by zealots and at the moment Theresa is basically allowing them to run the party.’

Ex-ambassadors warn Theresa May against no-deal Brexit A group of retired diplomats have issued a plea to Theresa May to delay Brexit to allow more time to establish a clearer plan or allow for a second referendum. In a statement to The Times, more than 40 former ambassadors and Foreign Office mandarins warned that if the Prime Minister secured agreement on her plan, it would not mark the end of uncertainty but the start of years of negotiations. They reported 'exasperation and incomprehension' among contacts overseas at the UK's failure to resolve its differences over its future relationship with the EU. The statement, organised by supporters of a second referendum, was signed by former ambassadors to the US, France and Russia, as well as one-time head of the Foreign Office Lord Kerr, one of the authors of the Article 50 clause which sets out the process for quitting the EU. Advertisement

The Tory divisions over Brexit yesterday widened in the wake of Mrs May’s Commons defeat on Valentine’s Day.

Mr Grieve said the next round of Brexit votes on February 27 would be a ‘high noon’ moment when mass resignations might bring Mrs May’s Government down.

He told the BBC that he understood a number of ministers had already told Mrs May that if she was unable to secure a Brexit Withdrawal Agreement which could command the support of the Commons, she should extend the date when Britain leaves the EU beyond the planned March 29.

He said ‘a dozen or even more’ ministers may resign if she refuses, including ‘up to half a dozen’ from the Cabinet.

Steve Baker, deputy chairman of the pro-Brexit European Research Group of Tory MPs, dismissed the row over Thursday’s vote as a ‘storm in a teacup’.

Brexit-backing MPs who abstained were not prepared to be associated with the ‘catastrophic and foolish negotiating error’ of taking a No Deal Brexit off the table, he said.

It came as a senior EU source said Ireland was under growing pressure from Brussels to soften its Brexit stance.

The source said Dublin faces a choice between erecting a hard border with Northern Ireland or leaving the single market if Britain leaves without a deal.

A physical border would be required to protect the single market’s integrity or all goods travelling from Ireland to the rest of the EU would need to be checked as if it were a non-member, the official added.

A senior EU diplomat said yesterday: ‘Soon enough, Ireland will have to face up to the fact that either there is a border on the island or a border between Ireland and the rest of the EU.’

What are the options for reworking the Irish border backstop? The EU has flatly dismissed calls for the Withdrawal Agreement to be reopened. But Theresa May has promised MPs that she will somehow get legally-binding changes that satisfy concerns about the Irish border backstop. Here are some possible options for how the PM might seek to get through the impasse. A unilateral exit clause Prominent backbenchers including former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab has pushed Mrs May to seek a unilateral get-out from the backstop. The current mechanism can only be deactivated through a joint review system - although the EU insists it is technically 'temporary'. But Brussels has insisted that an 'insurance policy' that can be ended by one side is not acceptable. Expiry date A hard end date to the backstop would allay the fears of most Tory MPs - as long as it is not too far in the future. Boris Johnson has suggested he could vote for the deal if she manages to get a time limit, although he also said it should conclude before the next election in May 2022. The former foreign secretary also unhelpfully insisted a legal 'codicil' - an amendment which would run alongside the Withdrawal Agreement - would not be enough to win him over and he wants the whole thing unpicked. Again, the EU has insisted it will not agree to a backstop that is time limited. The 'Malthouse Compromise' Tory Remainers and Brexiteers have been working on a proposal to replace the backstop with a looser, Canada-style free trade arrangements. The plan would deploy technology in a bid to avoid a hard border. But Brussels has already dismissed the technogical solutions as 'magical thinking', saying the systems needed do not yet exist. Guarantees that the backstop will only be 'temporary' The EU's top official, Martin Selmayr floated the idea of 'unzipping' the Withdrawal Agreement and inserting new guarantees about the 'temporary' nature of the backstop during meetings with MPs. He suggested the text of recent letters from Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker could be cut and pasted in without reopening other terms. But that would be highly unlikely to satisfy Brexiteers. Advertisement