The head of the European parliament’s Brexit steering group Guy Verhofstadt has claimed the UK will rejoin the EU one day because young people will demand to be part of the bloc. “It will happen,” he said.

In response Tory MEP Daniel Hannan told the BBC he supported holding another referendum in the future to test Mr Verhofstadt’s theory.

“I’m perfectly happy to have another referendum in a generation’s time and let people decide,” he told Radio 4’s Today programme.

It comes as the Commons authorities said money raised by the public to have Big Ben bong on 31 January cannot be accepted because of rules on private donations. Despite that, a campaign led by Tory MP Mark Francois ​to get the clock chiming has now raised more than £160,000.

Brexit Party chairman Richard Tice told the BBC: “I blame the bureaucrats. They’ve now said even if we raise the money, actually they won’t let us do it because they’re worried about spending privately-raised money on a public sector asset.”

Meanwhile in the Labour party Rebecca Long-Bailey and Emily Thornberry both set out their stalls for the leadership in their official launch events.

Ms Thornberry leant back on her experience, arguing the leader to succeed Jeremy Corbyn needed to be “battle hardened”, while Ms Long-Bailey invoked policies including the green new deal she had worked on for Mr Corbyn’s manifesto.

However both appear to be coming up short against the only man in the contest. In a YouGov poll conducted for the Times, Kier Starmer was placed ahead in the final round with a comfortable 63 per cent of the vote compared to the 37 per cent attributed to Rebecca Long-Bailey

Emily Thornberry would be out in the first round of votes, then Lisa Nandy, then Jess Phillips, according to the poll of 1005 Labour members.