EU Referendum: Conservative rifts deepen as MPs call for David Cameron to quit

Prime Minister warned that vote of no confidence is 'highly likely'

The Prime Minister faces calls for a vote of no confidence (GETTY)

A third Tory MP has broken ranks and publicly criticised David Cameron's handling of the EU referendum, saying he is considering calling for a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister.

Bill Cash, a veteran Eurosceptic who chairs the European Scrutiny Committee, branded the PM's EU Remain campaign “monumentally misleading propaganda". He added he is “certainly considering” submitting a letter of no confidence in the party leader to Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee - a backbench group of Conservative MPs in Westminster.

His comments follow a weekend of Tory attacks on Mr Cameron, which were led by Nadine Dorries, who said she believed he will be “toast” within days of a Brexit vote and branded him an "outright liar".

Prominent backbencher Andrew Bridgen also said that more than 50 MPs were ready to move against the Tory leader if Britons vote for Brexit on June 23.

In another attack, employment minister Priti Patel said Mr Cameron was “too rich” to care about immigration.

In an extraordinary intervention on ITV’s Peston on Sunday , Ms Dorries said that Mr Cameron will be “toast within days” of a Leave vote and revealed that she has already submitted a letter to the chairman of the 1922 Committee – the group of backbench Tory MPs in Westminster – calling for a vote of no confidence in Mr Cameron. She confirmed she was supporting Boris Johnson, the former Mayor of London, to succeed Mr Cameron.

Party rules dictate that 50 backbenchers must follow suit to trigger a vote of no confidence.

She said: “My letter is already in. If the Remain camp wins by a large majority – I think it would have to be 60/40 – then David Cameron might just survive; but if Remain win by a narrow majority or lose ... he’s toast within days. He has lied profoundly, and I think that is actually really at the heart of why Conservative MPs have been so angered. To say that Turkey is not going to join the European Union as far as 30 years is a lie."

“There are many issues about which David Cameron has told outright lies, and because of that, trust has gone in both him and George Osborne ... and it will be very hard for either of them to survive in the future.”

Ms Dorries insisted a “considerable” number of Tory MPs shared her view while Mr Bridgen said that tensions were so intense in the party that a challenge was “probably highly likely” as he warned the alternative was a “zombie parliament”.

“I think it's going to be very, very difficult to pull all the sides together and have a working majority going forward,” Mr Bridgen told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Pienaar’s Politics.

Dorries: 'Writing is very good for my mental health' (Rex)

Asked if a vote of no confidence against Mr Cameron would happen, the MP said: “It depends how the next few weeks go, but if true to form, I think there's at least 50 colleagues who are dissatisfied with the way that the Prime Minister has put himself front and centre of a fairly outrageous Remain campaign. I think that's probably highly likely.”

The MP insisted the situation was now so dire that an emergency general election would be needed before Christmas to restore order.

He added: “We have a very small majority on paper. I think we've seen over the past six months there's no effective majority for the Government to get necessary deficit reduction plans through, and I don't see how that's going to change moving forward. We could end up in a situation where we have a four-year zombie Parliament.

“The party is fairly fractured, straight down the middle, and I don't know which character could possibly pull it back together going forward for an effective government. I honestly think we probably need to go for a general election before Christmas and get a new mandate from the people.”

Another rebel MP told The Sunday Times: “I don't want to stab the Prime Minister in the back – I want to stab him in the front so I can see the expression on his face. You'd have to twist the knife, though, because we want it back for [George] Osborne. All we have to do is catch the Prime Minister with a live boy or dead girl and we are away”.

Meanwhile, Michael Gove and Mr Johnson launched an unprecedented attack on the Prime Minister's authority as they accused him of a having a “corrosive” impact on public trust in politicians because he had not lived up to promises to cut immigration.

And in an article forThe Daily Telegraph, Ms Patel wrote: “It’s shameful that those leading the pro-EU campaign fail to care for those who do not have their advantages. Their narrow self-interest fails to pay due regard to the interests of the wider public”.

Mr Cameron also began to show signs the pressures within the party were beginning to have a considerable effect on him. In an interview with GQ magazine, published today, he spoke of his frustration at the open division within his Cabinet, adding he was “sorry” Mr Johnson was not on his side in the increasingly bitter campaign over the EU referendum.

The Prime Minister said: “Of course it's frustrating, and I'm sorry Boris isn't on the In side. Because, as he said before, he's never been an ‘Outer’. I don't like having senior colleagues on different sides of the argument ... I didn't want that, but it is a subject of sufficient importance there was always going to be some of that.

“I'll leave it to Boris to explain what he's doing; he can explain that himself. I don't have to.”

As the war of words heightened, Tory former PM Sir John Major said the Leave side had "knowingly told untruths about the cost of Europe – they have promised negotiating gains that cannot and will not be delivered".

“They have raised phantom fears that cannot be justified, puffing up their case with false statistics, unlikely scenarios and downright untruths. To mislead the British nation in this fashion, when its very future is at stake, is unforgivable,” Mr Major wrote in the Mail on Sunday.