No 10 says May is meeting ministers throughout day to prepare for plan B statement

Theresa May will hold meetings with members of her cabinet in Downing Street to try to forge a route through the Brexit impasse, as one of her ministers suggested her withdrawal agreement could be improved if the UK was prepared properly to leave with no deal.

May was meeting a large number of cabinet ministers either individually or in small groups throughout the day, Downing Street said, adding that she did not intend to speak to any opposition or backbench Conservative MPs.

“They’ll be discussing the next steps ahead of Monday’s statement,” May’s spokeswoman said.

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The prime minister spoke to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, on Thursday evening. No 10 said the talks were constructive but declined to comment on their content. May intended to speak to other European leaders over the course of the weekend, the prime minister’s spokeswoman said.

Before the meetings, the international development secretary, Penny Mordaunt, said on Twitter that leaving the EU without a deal would outweigh the benefits of staying in the EU.

“It’s only when no-deal is better than a bad deal is believed by the EU that we’ll maximise our chances of a deal,” she tweeted, in a hint that she believes there is a better deal on offer than the one May has achieved.

Mordaunt’s social media posts have been strident in recent days. On Thursday she posted on Instagram praising the “patriotism” of those remainers who now backed the result of the referendum.

“The public must be exasperated,” she wrote. “Many of them agonised over which way to vote in the referendum. They had different views, different concerns, but whichever way they voted none of them were ever in any doubt that the result would be delivered.”

Mordaunt said that was symbolic of the “trust they have in our institutions”, including politicians. “The greatest act of patriotism in the last few years was not by the 17.4m who voted to leave, of which I was one,” she wrote. “It was by the vast majority of those who voted remain and who adhered to our national democratic values and tradition by accepting the referendum result. That is patriotism.”

The prime minister met groups of Conservative MPs on Thursday and a group of senior Brexiters – including the former cabinet ministers David Davis, Iain Duncan Smith, Owen Paterson and Theresa Villiers – told her that parliament would back a deal if she could find a way of dealing with the Northern Ireland backstop issue.

A senior Brexit-backing MP said they were now confident that the prime minister would not soften her Brexit deal. “She is not going to push this deal through on the back of Labour votes, that much is clear,” the MP said, evoking the Conservative split of the 19th century over the corn laws.

“This has got to be delivered by the Conservatives and the DUP, and I think this is understood. She cannot possibly do it using Labour votes, because that is Peel territory.”

Another senior leaver said they had been “reassured” by the prime minister that she was not intending to cave in over the customs union.