PLOTTING ministers who have leaked private Cabinet discussions should be sacked, senior Tories have insisted as the row over Conservative feuding continued.

Charles Walker, Vice Chairman of the party’s 1922 backbench committee, said Theresa May should fire senior colleagues found guilty of briefing maliciously against others.

"If the Prime Minister has to start removing Secretaries of State because they are not focusing on their job, they are focusing on their own personal ambitions, so be it. And she will have the support of the 1922 Committee," declared Mr Walker.

And he warned: “If those in the Cabinet can't zip it up and get on with their day-to-day jobs, then when it does come to choosing a new leader of the Conservative Party, we will skip a generation and go for a fresher, more collegiate face."

His Conservative colleague, Nigel Evans, the former Deputy Commons Speaker, was equally blunt, saying: “The vast majority of backbenchers are supporting the Prime Minister and, indeed, I’ve got to say it’s rare; normally, the men in grey suits as they’re called go up to the Prime Minister and tell them when it’s time to go and make way for somebody else.

“This time we’ve gone up to the Prime Minister and said to her, we are supporting you 100 per cent PM. We want you to use the message from the 1922 committee to tell your Cabinet, which she’s clearly done today, to get in line.”

When asked if this should mean dismissing ministers responsible for leaks, the Lancashire MP said: “I believe that they should be, yes I do. If they’re found to be briefing against one another and against the Prime Minister, I don’t think they should last any longer.”

He added: “The PM does have the authority to do that and she’ll have the backing of the 1922 if she does.”

Earlier, Mrs May called on her senior colleagues to show "strength and unity” as she urged them to keep details of their Cabinet discussions private.

Following a weekend of malevolent briefings against Chancellor Philip Hammond, the PM told senior ministers that some members of the Government had failed to take their responsibilities seriously.

She told the weekly meeting at No 10 that she had tried to encourage open discussion of policy within Cabinet but that it was vital for the UK Government that this remained private, her spokesman explained.

Mrs May told Cabinet that the “briefings and counter-briefings” seen over the weekend were "a case of colleagues not taking their responsibilities seriously".

She added: "There is a need to show strength and unity as a country and that starts around the Cabinet table."

The spokesman declined to say if individual ministers responded to her call but noted how they had shown "widespread agreement" with the PM's message.

The attempt to instil Cabinet discipline comes after a series of newspaper headlines about Mr Hammond's comments at last week's meeting, culminating in a story quoting an unnamed minister accusing the Chancellor of trying to "f*** up" Brexit.

It was claimed that at last week’s Cabinet meeting Mr Hammond was slapped down by the PM for saying that women could "even" become train drivers; a claim he denied.

A separate report said that he had told colleagues that public sector workers were “overpaid” compared with those in the private sector; a claim he failed to deny.

The Chancellor used a TV appearance on Sunday to accuse Cabinet rivals of trying to undermine his agenda for a "softer" business-friendly Brexit prioritising jobs and the economy.

But afterwards one minister was quoted as saying: "What's really going on is that the Establishment, the Treasury, is trying to f*** it up. They want to frustrate Brexit."

Meanwhile, the negative briefing continued at Westminster with one source accusing leading Brexiteers Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, and Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, of using the row over Britain’s so-called “divorce bill” with Brussels to crash the talks and instil a hard Brexit with no transitional period at all.

“They want a situation where the EU just say ‘enough is enough’ and show us the door,” he added.