Rishi Sunak was under spiralling pressure to toughen up his Rwanda Bill on Monday as Right-wing Conservative MPs warned the party would be “destroyed” if the Government fails to stop people crossing the Channel in small boats.
The Prime Minister is set for a showdown with Tory rebels over the legislation due to be debated on in the House of Commons on Tuesday as a major opinion poll suggested his party is facing a 1997-style electoral wipeout that would hand Labour a 120-seat majority.
Around 50 MPs have publicly backed amendments, by senior MP Bill Cash and ex-Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick, that would sideline international law from the Bill and curtail asylum seekers' rights to appeal against flights to east African nation.
Tory Party Deputy Chairman Lee Anderson and Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch are reportedly among those set to support the amendments.
Meanwhile those who are part of the centrist One Nation Conservative caucus have argued the plan is as strong as it possibly can be.
The group's chairman Damian Green told LBC: "I think that those who are saying we need to toughen it with these various amendments that have been put down are wrong.
"I think it will make the bill less effective. And therefore I oppose all these amendments. I'm supporting the Government with its original bill."
He added: "Many dozens of my colleagues oppose these amendments as well. We think that the bill goes within an inch of what is acceptable legally but doing things like taking away individual rights of appeal, disapplying tested European Convention of Human Rights, but also the Refugee Convention. These are steps that the British government shouldn't do."
At least five people died in an attempt to cross the English Channel from France in the early hours on Sunday morning.
Emergency workers rescued 32 people after the vessel got into trouble near Wimereux on the French coast at about 2am on Sunday.
Two people were taken to hospital in a critical condition, French authorities said, while the UK Government said five people had died.
Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron said the "heartbreaking" deaths showed "we've got to stop the boats".
Despite the tragedy crossings have continued, with a Border Force vessel arriving into the Port of Dover later on Sunday with people believed to be migrants on board.
It comes as a YouGov survey of 14,000 people indicated that the Tories under Mr Sunak could hold on to as few as 169 seats as Sir Keir Starmer's Labour entered Downing Street with 385.
Eleven cabinet ministers are set to lose their seats according to the research, including Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and Defence Secretary Grant Shapps.
The polling, reported by the Telegraph, suggested that every "red wall" seat in the north of England won from Labour by Boris Johnson in 2019 could be lost at the next general election in what would be the biggest collapse in support for a governing party since 1906.
Support for Reform UK would be decisive in 96 Tory losses despite the Nigel Farage-linked party not picking up a single seat, the polling suggests, while the SNP would also suffer.
Former cabinet minister Sir Simon Clarke said the result would be a "disaster".
"This result would represent a disaster for Conservatives and our country," he said. "The time for half measures is over. We either deliver on small boats or we will be destroyed."
The research, using the multi-level regression and post-stratification method, was commissioned by a group of Tory donors working with former Brexit negotiator Lord David Frost.
Lord Frost said the party needed to "head off the looming disaster" by being "as tough as it takes" on immigration.
