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Theresa May dismissed warnings about the rise of Nigel Farage's Brexit Party in the wake of her disastrous Brexit negotiations a senior Tory backbencher has claimed.

And the Prime Minister reportedly said she was less worried about the populist Brexiteer than about the Liberal Democrats .

Sir Vince Cable's party has been pushed into fifth place in recent polls, following the rise of the Brexit Party.

Yet Nigel Evans, a Tory backbencher and joint executive secretary of the party's 1922 Committee, claims she told him she was less concerned about Farage than about the Lib Dems.

(Image: PA)

Mr Evans told the BBC: "I spoke to the Prime Minister just a few months ago and I said 'whatever you do on these Brexit negotiations, you must not breathe new life into Nigel Farage.'

"And she looked at me rather oddly and said that she was more concerned about the Liberal Democrats.

"Well my goodness me, we've now got the Brexit Party and we've seen a huge surge of support."

A poll this weekend found almost half of Tory councillors are set to back Nigel Farage in forthcoming EU elections.

(Image: Getty Images)

Only 52% of Conservative councillors plan to vote for their own party in the EU elections, according to a damning Survation poll of 781 of them.

Another poll on Thursday found the Tories are set to lose almost half of their voters - with a quarter shifting to the Brexit Party.

The ComRes survey, taken in the days following the launch of Farage's new party, suggested just 53% of people who voted Tory in the 2017 election would vote for them again in the next general election.

And a quarter of 2017 Tory voters said they were going to vote for Nigel Farage's new Brexit Party in the next national election.