THERESA May faces a Conservative coup as rumours swirled on Tuesday night that the 1922 backbench committee had received the 48 letters from MPs required to trigger a leadership contest.

Multiple sources, including one Cabinet minister, told reporters that Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 group, had asked to meet May after Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday because he had been sent enough letters by disgruntled Tories.

The process was triggered by Breixteer Jacob Rees-Mogg last month after May published her draft withdrawal agreement.

READ MORE: SNP warn Labour: oust Theresa May's government or we will

The Prime Minister is also scheduled to visit Dublin on Wednesday to continue her frantic bid to save her Brexit deal. Having abandoned a Commons vote on the withdrawal agreement rather than face a heavy defeat, May began a tour of European capitals.

In rainy Berlin, a hitch with May’s car door briefly trapped her inside, delaying her red carpet handshake with German chancellor Angela Merkel. May is to meet Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in Dublin tonight ahead of the EU summit tomorrow and Friday.

There is little sign May will get the concessions over the Northern Ireland backstop she is seeking before bringing the deal back to the Commons for a vote.

The National:

“The deal we achieved is the best possible. It’s the only deal possible. There is no room whatsoever for renegotiation,” European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker, pictured above, said in an address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

In the Commons on Tuesday Speaker John Bercow mocked Philip Hammond after he told Labour MPs to vote for May’s Brexit deal so “we can all move on”. Bercow pulled the Chancellor up after he said “there is a deal on the table” and MPs should vote for it.

The Speaker said: “I just very gently say to the Chancellor, to whom I’ve been listening with great care, it’s quite difficult to vote for something if there isn’t a vote.” He added: “I’m trying to help him but it’s a point that’s so blindingly obvious I’m surprised that I have to state it.”

Former Tory education secretary Nicky Morgan warned the Government not to use “trickery” to stop a vote on the deal after Labour’s Yvette Cooper secured an urgent question asking the Government to clarify its position if no deal is reached by January 21. Brexit Minister Robin Walker said the Government would bring a motion to Parliament in that event but expected there would be a deal to vote on.

Labour MP Pat McFadden likened the Government’s approach to to Don Corleone in the Godfather movies. He asked: “Is the Government strategy to continue to give us a meaningful vote, or is it instead to run down the clock, and in the words of the Godfather movies, in the face of no deal, to make us an offer that we can’t refuse?”