He said after 30 months of negotiation, and with the government in “a mess”, giving the final say to the people would become the “logical” outcome if every other option were to be exhausted.

But Mrs May will tell MPs on Monday: “Let us not break faith with the British people by trying to stage another referendum.

“Another vote which would do irreparable damage to the integrity of our politics, because it would say to millions who trusted in democracy, that our democracy does not deliver.

“Another vote which would likely leave us no further forward than the last.

“And another vote which would further divide our country at the very moment we should be working to unite it.”

On Sunday she said  Blair’s backing for another referendum was “an insult to the office he once held” and risked undermining Brexit negotiations.

Meanwhile, writing in his Daily Telegraph column, former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said a second referendum would “provoke instant, deep and ineradicable feelings of betrayal”.

The Brexiteer said the idea a fresh poll would be held was “sickening”.

The prime minister is due to update MPs on last week’s European Council summit, where she made an appeal to EU leaders to help get the deal “over the line”.

She went to Brussels at the end of a week in which she delayed the Commons vote on her Brexit deal, having been warned it would be rejected by a significant margin, and then went on to survive a vote of no confidence in her leadership by Conservative MPs by 200 votes to 117.

She had been seeking legal assurances over the controversial “backstop” plan to prevent a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, if no trade deal is reached.

But EU leaders told her the negotiated withdrawal agreement was “not open for renegotiation”, although some clarification was possible.

(Source: BBC News)