Major Conservative donors are refusing to give money to the party because of “disgust” at Theresa May’s leadership and her handling of Brexit, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

The businessmen – who together have given millions of pounds to the party since Mrs May became Prime Minister – do not want to fund a potential snap general election with Mrs May still in post.

Several said they were planning to stay away from next month's glittering Black and White Ball, one of the party’s biggest annual fundraising events, when access to ministers is auctioned to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds.

On Tuesday MPs will vote on a series of possible measures to break the Brexit deadlock, with Tory backbenchers and the DUP coalescing around a plan to remove the Northern Ireland backstop from Mrs May's Brexit deal and replace it with "alternative arrangements" to avoid a hard border.

If that fails, a snap election would be one possible option for breaking the Brexit deadlock, but a shortage of donations would make it more difficult to defeat Jeremy Corbyn's union-backed Labour party.