Nigel Evans, the joint executive-secretary of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, advised fellow MPs to avoid any “dalliances”.
One report said the Brexit Party leader was “100 per cent sure that there is at least one high-profile defection in the pipeline”.
A prominent Brexiteer MP told a WhatsApp text message group of Tory backbenchers: “Maybe we should all just defect to the Brexit Party. Can you imagine the chaos?”
Mr Evans warned defectors would help Labour.
He said: “Ninety-nine percent of Conservative MPs see themselves as Brexit Tories and we want to deliver the clean Brexit that we promised in 2017. The Brexit Party is superfluous to the Brexit Tories and any dalliances with them at a general election could let in a Brexit-in-name-only Labour Party dominated by fanatical Remainers.”
It also emerged yesterday that Tories caught campaigning for the Brexit Party risked expulsion.
Mr Lewis urged the Tories to back the party in this Thursday’s local elections despite the anger over Brexit.
He insisted ministers still wanted to win Commons backing for Theresa May’s Brexit deal in time to cancel the Euro elections due on May 23.
“I don’t deny the frustration people in our party have over where we are on Brexit. I share that frustration. I want to get this done so we don’t fight those European elections,” Mr Lewis told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show.
He refused to say when the Tories would launch their Euro election campaign. “If and when we are at the point where we know we are definitely fighting those European elections, then we will take some decisions about that,” he said.
He denied donors were deserting the party, insisting 2018 had been a “record peacetime fundraising year”.
Senior Tories fear the party could lose more than 800 council seats in Thursday’s elections. Tory deputy chairman Helen Whately, on Sky News’ Sophy Ridge On Sunday, urged Tories to focus on local issues but admitted that “it is going to be a difficult night”.
A YouGov study for Hope Not Hate put the Tories on 13 percent for the European contest, behind the Brexit Party on 28 and Labour on 22.
