THERESA May has brushed aside speculation of an impending Conservative Party vote of no-confidence in her as Prime Minister, insisting she is focusing on securing reassurances from EU leaders about her faltering Brexit deal.

While the Tory leader undertook her whistlestop tour of European capitals, at Westminster the talk was whether or not the bid to oust her from No 10 was gaining momentum.

Rumours were flying around the Commons that the anti-May mood was hardening and that the drive led by the European Research Group of Brexiteers, chaired by Somerset MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, might be getting very near the 48 signatures needed to spark a no-confidence vote in the PM.

However, loyal Tory MPs downplayed the speculation. One backbencher said the ERG was “struggling” to get the necessary numbers while another insisted: “It’s nothing more than rumour at the moment; no one really knows.”

Last month, the attempted coup against the PM flopped after Mr Rees-Mogg announced he had put in his letter, calling for a no-confidence vote in his party leader. One loyal Government minister denounced the rebels as “nutters”.

Early on Tuesday, former Brexit minister Steve Baker, the deputy leader of the ERG, urged colleagues to put in letters demanding a vote on the PM’s future, saying: “What I would say to my colleagues is: you now face the certainty of failure with Theresa May, you must be brave and make the right decision to change prime minister and change prime minister now."

Amid the churning of the Westminster rumour-mill, Mrs May was asked whether she had been told the threshold of 48 letters that have to be sent to Sir Graham Brady, the Chairman of the Tories’ 1922 Committee, had been reached.

The PM replied: "No, I have been here in Europe dealing with the issue I have promised Parliament I would be dealing with."

Should the 48 number be reached, then Sir Graham would be dutybound to call a no-confidence vote swiftly, almost certainly this week while MPs were at Westminster.

However, for Mrs May to lose the vote, 157 Tory MPs would have to side against her. The rebels have to calculate that this would happen because if the party leader won, then she could not be challenged for another year.

Meanwhile, potential leadership contender Boris Johnson, who sported a new leaner haircut at the weekend, has revealed he is on a diet and has already lost almost a stone in just two weeks after deciding he needed to give up alcohol and “delicious late-night binges of chorizo and cheese”.

The former Foreign Secretary, who conspicuously failed to rule out a leadership challenge at the weekend, told the Spectator magazine he realised he was “carting around 16-and-a-half stone” after visiting a French doctor and decided he had to try and lose weight as the UK was leaving the EU.

Noting how “if I can do it, so can we all,” Mr Johnson insisted Brexit would “launch us on a nimbler, lither and more dynamic future”.