Layla Moran, MP, with the party’s former leader Tim Farron, said she did not know of the plans

Liberal Democrats are understood to be plotting to replace Sir Vince Cable as party leader with a 35-year-old female MP.

Senior Lib Dems are set to meet this week to discuss pushing forward Layla Moran, MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, to take the helm of the party. The former teacher, who arrived in the Commons in the snap election last year, is the party’s education spokeswoman.

Sir Vince, 75, was criticised last week after he and the party’s former leader, Tim Farron, missed a knife-edge vote on Brexit legislation that Theresa May won by only three votes.

Lib Dem supporters said the pair had undermined the party’s central goal of opposing Britain’s exit from the European Union by missing the vote. Sir Vince was