A dozen Tory MPs who voted remain are on deselection hitlist drawn up by hardline Brexiteers who have launched a campaign of “entryism” to make the Conservative Party more Eurosceptic.

A leaked document, seen by this newspaper, shows that the former universities minister Sam Gyimah, who dropped out of the Tory leadership race this month, is set to become the latest victim of the Blue Wave campaign led by Arron Banks, the businessman who helped fund the leave campaign.

According to the leaked document drawn up by Banks’s Leave.EU campaign group, the number of constituency party members who have signed a petition requesting a special general meeting is “very near” the 50 required to trigger a no-confidence motion in Gyimah. Some 44 members of the