A number of Conservative MPs are believed to be plotting to topple Kemi Badenoch after Nigel Farage's "People's Army" stormed to success at the polls last week.
Panic has allegedly flooded the Tory party ever since Reform UK made a clean-sweep of previously Conservative-run councils, leading the Brexit supremo to beg the leader to stay in post.
On Friday morning, the Reform leader issued a heartfelt plea to his challenger, saying: "Please stay. Please don't resign.
"We want you to stay on as leader. I'll put some money if you want to keep you there..."
Reform UK ousted the Tories from swathes of their true blue heartlands on Friday
PA
Now, leadership rumours appear to have been reignited as backbenchers are understood to be organising a party coup.
Two senior MPs have now told The Independent that they are meeting with colleagues to consider ways in which they could give Badenoch the boot.
“We cannot continue as we are and she [Badenoch] is just not up to the task,” one of the MPs told the paper.
Reflecting on the party's worst set of local elections results, another lamented: "These results were actually worse than last year’s General Election. We have somehow gone backwards."
On Friday, Badenoch suffered blow after blow as her party bled 674 seats and were dethroned from 15 councils - even in previous so-called blue heartlands.
The very same day, Nigel Farage declared that his party was now the "real opposition to the Government", taking to the stage all over the UK in a series of rousing victory speeches.
LATEST ON THE TORY PARTY'S DEMISE:
Speculation has since surrounded former leadership contender and Home Secretary James Cleverly, who has faded into the background of Westminster life since he was eliminated from the race last October and hopped onto the backbenches.
And, unlike Badenoch who has dismissed Reform as simply a "protest party", Cleverly openly admitted that Reform was a real threat, telling GB News that Farage was "one of the best political communicators of our generation".
"We've got to recognise that, and dismissing him is an error," he warned, adding that he could "rule nothing out and nothing in" on his leadership aspirations.
It has also been rumoured that Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick could be up for snatching the reins from his boss in the coming months as his Newark council area was the only region to make Tory gains on Friday.
Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch went head-to-head in the Tory leadership race in October
GETTY
However, beyond Cleverly and Jenrick, a source has explained that the plot goes "beyond the usual suspects".
Badenoch's critics have hit out at the Tory leader's inability to assert that Reform poses a real threat to the party after she snubbed the concept of establishing an "Anti-Reform attack unit" within her party's headquarters.
A senior backbencher has said: "I feel like I have been banging my head against a brick wall trying to find out what the strategy is to take on Farage and Reform. There has been nothing."
Meanwhile, after his defeat, former Conservative leader of North Northamptonshire Council demanded Badenoch resigns, declaring: "I can’t see how a leader of a party can stay on with such terrible results across the country."
