At zero per cent, it is even below Ukip, which has been all but destroyed by multiple, scandal-hit leadership changes and the rise of the rival Brexit Party led by Nigel Farage, yet manages one per cent. There is pressure on the party’s five remaining MPs to after two of their former colleagues, Chuka Umunna and Sarah Wollaston, joined the Liberal Democrats. But a defiant Ms Soubry, The Independent Group for Change’s leader, insisted it remained vital, as the Brexit crisis deepens, saying: “We will carry on.”

Ms Soubry told The Independent: “We are on a much firmer footing, I don’t think I’m being over-optimistic.”

The Independent Group for Change’s fortunes will revive memories of Paddy Ashdown’s comment that Liberal support was “an asterisk” when he took over in 1989.

The ambitious bid to remake British politics, now called The Independent Group for Change, after two chaotic name changes and a bitter split failed to register in the survey.

The poll, by BMG Research for The Independent found the Conservatives have a six-point lead over Labour, in line with other surveys showing a small bounce for Boris Johnson.

The Conservatives are polling at 31 percent, with the Brexit Party on 12 percent as a rival for anti-EU votes.

The subtext reveals that Mr Johnson would be far from confident of winning if he calls a snap general election.

The Liberal Democrats are on 19 percent.

Having been briefly called Change UK, it had to ditch the name under threat of legal action from the campaign organisation Change.org.

Nevertheless, Ms Soubry, a former Conservative MP, struck a defiant tone, saying: “We have fixed some of our problems that we had and are on a much firmer footing.

“We are recruiting members and we are the people, looking at the alternatives, who combine the Labour Social Democratic and One Nation Conservative traditions.”

Ms Soubry said her hopes for the party “may take longer than we hoped”.

But, she insisted: “I don’t think I’m being over-optimistic.

“We have five MPs, but literally every vote counts now and we are now very strong, because the five are as one.”

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