Theresa May is under renewed pressure to stand down, with new analysis showing the Conservative Party are on course to lose almost 60 seats in the event of a general election. According to Electoral Calculus research for The Sunday Telegraph, Labour could capitalise on Brexit to sweep into power. The analysis is the latest in a clutch of surveys which point to a collapse in the Tory vote, with two other polls putting support for the party at its lowest in five years.

It comes after a six-month flexible delay to Brexit was agreed last Thursday, meaning Britain must take part in the European elections on May 23.

This could be averted if the Conservatives could agree on a compromise with Labour that would see a withdrawal agreement backed in the House of Commons.

However, sources close to Mrs May suggested the talks between Labour and the Government are unlikely to advance much further in the coming week, unless the Prime Minister moves on her red lines over a future customs union.

As Brexit uncertainty looms with the Conservative Party potentially heading for a permanent split, a newly-resurfaced speech by Nigel Farage has reemerged.

In 2013, the prominent Brexiteer claimed Margaret Thatcher would join Ukip instead of the Conservatives if she was faced with the choice then.

During a talk at Westminster Mr Farage, who at the time was Ukip leader, described his party as the true inheritors of Lady Thatcher’s policy on Europe.

He said: “I can’t believe that a young Margaret Thatcher leaving Oxford today would join the Conservative Party led by David Cameron.

“I think she would get involved in Ukip, and no doubt topple me within 12 months or so.”

However, since then, much has changed and not only has Mr Farage distanced itself from Ukip but Britain also historically voted to leave the EU in a referendum in 2016.

The MEP has now founded the Brexit Party in an attempt to “fight back against the betrayal of democracy” by Theresa May, as he sees it.

The party defends the democratic mandate of the referendum, which Mr Farage believes has been ostracised both by Mrs May’s softening and delaying of Brexit, and Jeremy Corbyn’s flirtation with a second referendum.

Margaret Thatcher’s Europe policy does closely align to Mr Farage’s, so it could be easily argued the Iron Lady would join the Brexit Party instead of Mrs May’s Conservatives if she was faced with the choice today.

In her 2002 book “Statecraft”, Lady Thatcher fitly pinpointed many of the arguments made by current eurosceptics and dubbed Britain’s EU membership a “political error of the first magnitude”.

She wrote: “That such an unnecessary and irrational project as building a European superstate was ever embarked on will seem in future years to be perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era.

“And that Britain, with her traditional strengths and global destiny, should have ever been part of it will appear a political error of the first magnitude.

“There is, though, still time to choose a different and better course.”

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