Ministers are in talks with as many as 25 Labour MPs to force through Theresa May's Chequers Brexit deal, risking open warfare with the party’s own MPs.

The Government’s whips’ office has spent recent months making contact with the MPs as a back-up option for when Mrs May’s Brexit deal is put to a vote in Parliament in early December, The Telegraph has been told.

News of the wooing operation has infuriated Eurosceptic Tory MPs, who are now threatening to vote against elements of the Budget and other “money bills” to force Mrs May to drop her Chequers plan.

Eurosceptic Conservative MPs back a looser Canada-plus free trade deal with the EU over the closer vision agreed by Mrs May’s Cabinet at her Chequers country home in the summer.

The scale of the talks would explain why Cabinet ministers are overwhelmingly confident that the Government can get its Chequers deal through the House of Commons.

One Government source said the whips were engaged in an "ingenious plan" to get “25 Labour MPs to vote" for the Chequers proposal when Parliament is given a meaningful vote on it before Christmas.