Tory battlelines are being drawn ahead of an autumn which could split the party, with a new bloc of 50 Conservative MPs set to challenge the hardline Eurosceptic Research Group.

The new Brexit Delivery Group – led by Tory MPs Simon Hart and Andrew Percy – will meet weekly when Parliament returns next month “to find a pragmatic Brexit outcome”.

Chris Skidmore, the party’s head of policy, has urged the party to unite, warning there was a “the risk of the Conservative Party becoming self-defined as simply the Brexit party, without a clear domestic policy offer for the country".

Writing in the Telegraph on Sunday, Mr Skidmore, who has been charged with finding 1,000 ideas to invigorate Tory thinking, said the party risks "becoming ever more consumed by process instead of outcomes.”