Building a new Royal Yacht Britannia has “overwhelming support” and would allow the Conservatives finally to deliver on a 20 year old Conservative manifesto pledge, the party’s official historian Lord Lexden says.

In a letter to today's Daily Telegraph, Lord Lexden said a new yacht would fulfil a “deep longing” for Britain to show that it is “confident about our capacity to shape a new national destiny” outside the EU.

He says: “It is hard to think of anything that would hearten our country more than the revival of our neglected maritime traditions which a new royal yacht would symbolise.”

More than 70 Conservative MPs are backing plans for a new royal yacht to act as a catalyst for a newly independent Britain to win new trade deals.

The Daily Telegraph has started a campaign for a return of a modern-day version of Britannia. Theresa May, the Prime Minister, has set her face against the idea however.

Lord Lexden points out that John Major’s Government first scrapped a replacement for Britannia in 1995 before announcing that it would go ahead after all 20 years ago this month, in January 1997.

However Labour’s Prime Minister Tony Blair then axed plans for the new yacht in October 1997.