Jacob Rees-Mogg urges May to quit as he claims majority of Tories will back Brexit Party in European elections

Brexiteer says he does not ‘see how a leader can go on’ with so little support

Jacob Rees-Mogg has urged Theresa May to quit to end the “complete vacuum of leadership” as he claimed the majority of Tory members he meets say they would vote for the Brexit Party.

The staunch Brexiteer said he did not “see how a leader can go on” with so little support from party faithful, saying Ms May had lost the backing of Conservative associations across the country.

As a remarkable new poll put the Conservatives in fifth place in the upcoming European elections, Mr Rees-Mogg said the activists he was meeting were saying they would vote for Nigel Farage’s insurgent outfit.

The YouGov survey ahead of next week’s contest place the Tories on just 10 per cent, some 24 points behind the Brexit Party, and trailing Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party.

Mr Rees-Mogg, chairman of the European Research Group of backbench Brexiteers, told LBC: “I’ve never known the Tory Party in this position.

“Normally when you go and speak to Conservative associations and you’re not fully supportive of the leader of the party, whoever that leader happens to be, you’re not the most popular person in the room.

“At the moment, nobody is saying anything supportive of the leader or of the leader’s policy.

“The majority of the people at associations I’m addressing – and these are members of the party – tell me they’re voting for the Brexit Party.

“I don’t see how a leader can go on so removed from the support base of the party membership.”

Mr Rees-Mogg admitted the upcoming polls would be “difficult” for the party and appealed to voters to keep the faith.

In a message to Tories, he said: “I would appeal to their loyalty, to their tradition, and to say that the Conservative Party will get a new leader at some point.”

He added: “We want that new leader to have a base on which he or she can build and if we find that we are getting under 15 per cent of the vote, if we are coming fifth behind the Greens, then it will be harder for that figure to rebuild.”

His comments came as fellow Conservative Huw Merriman warned his party was in for “an absolute mauling” in the elections after the deadline for Britain’s exit from the EU was delayed to October.

Mr Merriman, a parliamentary aide to chancellor Philip Hammond, told BBC Radio 4’s Westminister Hour: “The public will blame the Conservative government because we were the party that brought forward the referendum.

“So for those that didn’t want it and wanted to remain, they will blame us for having tried to take us out and those who voted to leave, they will blame us for having not got the country out of the EU.

“So we are at the perfect storm. Yes, I think we will get an absolute mauling.”

Nigel Evans, an executive member of the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs, also warned his party was “going to get an absolute hammering” in the elections.

“Even the opinion polls for the next general election are woeful for the Conservative Party,” he told The Emma Barnett Show on BBC Radio 5 Live.

“They’re the worst I’ve seen in my political history and I’ve been a member of the party for 44 years.”

The prime minister is due to meet Mr Evans and other Tory backbench leaders on Thursday, where she is expected to set out the roadmap for her departure from Downing Street.

Ms May promised her angry party in March that she would resign once the first phase of Brexit was delivered, a pledge her advisers say she is committed to honouring.

But cross-party talks with Labour have entered their seventh week without progress amid calls from both sides on their leaders to walk away from the negotiations.