Referendum: I don't need to sign a grovelling letter to show support for PM - top Tory David Davis

This evening 85 MPs added their name to a letter sent to the Daily Telegraph backing the Prime Minister to continue in post. They say he has a “mandate and a duty” to continue as Prime Minister, in an attempt to unite the party following the EU referendum.

Among those who did not sign it were David Davis, MP for Haltemprice and Howden, and arch-Eurosceptic and Maastricht rebel Bill Cash MP.

Speaking to radio station LBC, Mr Davis said: “I don’t sign grovelling letters and I don’t sign threatening letters.

“That falls into grovelling.”

Thatcher would back Brexit says top Tory Davis

Mr Davis was David Cameron’s main rival in the 2005 Conservative leadership contest however last week he attacked fellow pro-Brexit MPs for calling for the Prime Minister to stand down after the EU referendum.

David Davis said the calls for a new Tory leader were an “unnecessary and unhelpful distraction”.

Other MPs whose names do not appear on the letter backing the Prime Minister are Nadine Dorries, former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, chair of the Public Administration Committee Bernard Jenkin and long-standing eurosceptic John Redwood.