Brexit day: Brexiteers and right-wing newspapers vent rage over failure to leave EU today

'We should have left without a deal at 11 o'clock, that's what people expected,' Jacob Rees-Mogg claims

Right-wing newspapers have joined Brexiteers in venting their fury that Britain’s departure from the EU is not happening today.

A fiery front-page editorial in the Daily Mail fumes Britain is no longer on track to become “a proud sovereign nation once more” at 11pm tonight.

It pleads with MPs to “uphold democracy” and back Theresa May’s Brexit deal during this afternoon’s crunch debate in the House of Commons.

The Daily Express dubs 29 March the “darkest hour for democracy” and said Britons’ belief in the democratic process had been “rocked to its core”.

“Today at 11pm Britain was to be freed from the shackles of the EU, but after 1,009 days of deliberation MPs have failed to honour the referendum result,” it said on its front page.

In an editorial inside, the newspaper said instead of Brexit Day, the UK was instead experiencing “chaos, fear and dunces running the show”.

Leading Brexiteers have also lashed out at the supposed blockers of Brexit on the day the Article 50 process was supposed to have ended.

The international trade secretary Liam Fox said: “We were meant to leave today, and we should have been leaving at 11 o’clock tonight.

“I fear for the consequences if Parliament chooses to utterly ignore a promise that they made directly to the voters.”

Conservative backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg said it was a “great failure” Brexit had been delayed from 11pm tonight.

“We should have left without a deal at 11 o’clock, that’s what people expected," he said.

However, the ERG hardliner admitted that despite months of virulent opposition to Mrs May’s deal with the EU, he would vote for it later today.

Former Tory leader Michael Howard told LBC it was a “sad day”.

“We were told we were going to leave today, I wanted to leave today and I expected to leave today so this is a very sad day," he said.

But despite large numbers of recalcitrant Brexiteers abandoning their resistance to the deal, most observers still expect it to be rejected by MPs for a third time, partly because the Democratic Unionist Party are refusing to budge from their opposition.

As MPs prepare for “meaningful vote 3”, several pro-Brexit groups are descending on Westminster to demand the UK does still leave the EU.

Nigel Farage’s 200-mile March to Leave finally reaches parliament at 4pm, where the former Ukip leader will address the protesters.

Despite promoting the march, Mr Farage has only sporadically joined the actual walkers in their journey from Sunderland.

Ukip, which has taken a sharp turn to the far-right in recent years, will hold its own “Make Brexit Happen Rally” in Whitehall with Tommy Robinson at 4pm.