Theresa May will face her Conservative backbenchers tonight as she battles to save her premiership and her Brexit deal.
The prime minister will address the powerful 1922 Committee as MPs in the Commons debate alternatives to her twice-defeated deal.
Tory MP Nigel Evans, who is a joint executive secretary of the committee, said Mrs May should use the address to “give a timetable for her departure”.
He said: “A number of Brexiteers are reluctant to support her deal because they think if it gets over the line, she will then say ‘look what I’ve achieved, I’m staying’.
“If the prime minister announces a timetable of departure, I think that’s going to swing a lot of people behind her deal. We could get it over the line.”
But, in an unexpected boost for Mrs May, Jacob Rees-Mogg said he would support her deal when it returned to the Commons – possibly on Thursday.
He previously said that he would only back the Withdrawal Agreement if the DUP, who are essential for the Mrs May’s Commons majority, also supported it.
Mr Rees-Mogg, who chairs the influential European Research Group (ERG), said: “The choice seems to be Mrs May’s deal or no Brexit.
“I have always thought that no deal is better than Mrs May’s deal, but Mrs May’s deal is better than not leaving at all.”
A number of other ERG members have fallen in behind Mr Rees-Mogg but on Tuesday the DUP hinted that they would rather see a long extension to Brexit than vote for the current deal.
The party’s Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson, writing in the Telegraph, said: “There are some colleagues who I admire greatly and who have stood firmly with us in defending Northern Ireland who now take the view that the Withdrawal Agreement, even though it is a rotten deal, is better than losing Brexit.
“To them I say that, if the deal goes through, we have lost our right to leave the EU.
“Even if we are forced into a one-year extension, we at least would have a say on the things which affect us during that time and would have the right to unilaterally decide to leave.”
The continued wrangling over Mrs May’s deal and her future as prime minister comes against the backdrop of a series of votes in the Commons in which MPs will express their preference for an alternative Brexit strategy.
Alistair Burt, who quit his ministerial role at the Foreign Office to vote against the government on Monday, said Mrs May must recognise a “different answer” was now needed.
