"People talk about reluctant remainers, but I think there have been a lot of reluctant Brexiters around, people who voted leave thinking it wouldn't happen but they'd be able to vent and to tell all their friends at dinner parties they'd done it," said one Tory minister.

"He thought what all those reluctant Brexiters thought: it would be a vote for remain, he would be seen as having stood up for a principle." After which leave's newest martyr could simply have bided his time for a year or so before being triumphantly installed in Downing Street.

On Friday a government website saw an "exceptionally high" number of visits as hundreds of thousands of signatures were added to a second referendum e-petition in the wake of Britain's leave vote. EU parliament leader: we want Britain out as soon as possible President Martin Schulz says speeding up of UK exit being considered after `continent taken hostage because of Tory party fight'
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By the early hours of Saturday more than 520,000 people had signed up, over five times the number needed for the issue to be raised in Parliament.

The surge came as nearly 100,000 people signed a petition calling on London's mayor, Sadiq Khan, to declare the capital independent from the UK and apply to join the European Union.