Senior Tories have lashed out at a “reckless and selfish” former minister after he called on Rishi Sunak to step down to avoid being “massacred” at the election.

Former ministers urged colleagues to put their duty to the country ahead of “tribalism” following a challenge to the prime minister launched by Sir Simon Clarke.

While Sir Simon appears to be a lone voice at the moment, the infighting has been likened to an episode of BBC’s hit psychological reality show The Traitors – in which traitors must be rooted out and “banished” by faithfuls.

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Writing in The Telegraph, the former levelling up secretary insisted “extinction is a very real possibility” for the party if Mr Sunak leads it into the election this year.

However former defence minister Tobias Ellwood told Sky News: “It’s not only dangerous, reckless, selfish, it’s also defeatist because what the electorate want to see, they want to see leadership, they want to see a good manifesto within it, but they also want to see unity.

“That is what will win a general election. And to do this months away from the next general election is absolutely shocking.”

Mr Ellwood was the latest senior figure to join the pile on, with many Conservatives coming out last night and this morning to criticise their colleague.

Home Secretary James Cleverly said it would be “foolish” to have further dissent within the party, arguing that it would leave the door open to Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer.

Former Brexit secretary Sir David Davis said: “The party and the country are sick and tired of MPs putting their own leadership ambitions ahead of the UK’s best interests.”

Former home secretary Dame Priti Patel said: “Engaging in facile and divisive self indulgence only serves our opponents, it’s time to unite and get on with the job.”

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Former prime minister Liz Truss, who gave Sir Simon a cabinet position after he backed her leadership bid, also does not back his intervention, it is understood.

However a Tory source told our political editor Beth Rigby that Sir Simon is only saying “what everyone knows but won’t say out loud” and “scores of MPs privately agree”.

And a senior MP on the right of the party has also said that two by-elections next month could be a “watershed moment”, adding: “If we get slaughtered, the herd might well panic.”

Sir Keir Starmer seized on the divisions during PMQS, saying the Tories were “fighting each other to death” and calling it “the longest episode of Eastenders ever put to film”.

Lucy Powell, the shadow leader of the House of Commons, earlier compared the row to “an episode of The Traitors”, telling Sky News: “I can’t keep up with who’s a ‘traitor’ and who’s a ‘faithful’ and who is going to be ‘banished’ and who isn’t.”

Sir Simon’s intervention comes amid a number of struggles for the prime minister, including falling approval ratings and unhappiness within his party over the stalled Rwanda deportation plan for asylum seekers.

Last week he was one of 11 Conservative MPs to vote against Mr Sunak’s bill to revive the scheme. Dame Andrea Jenkyns, one of the other rebels, has previously called for the prime minister to go and told Sky News on Monday she stood by that view.

Meanwhile, a Tory rebel source said that “several” letters of no confidence in Mr Sunak had now been submitted. A minimum of 53 would need to be sent in to trigger a leadership contest.

But former deputy chairman Lee Anderson, who resigned in protest over the Rwanda bill last week, played down reports Mr Sunak could be replaced before the next election.

Postal minister Kevin Hollingrake also denied there was a “plot” to oust him, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the party is united “in many aspects”.