Tory MPs who support Rishi Sunak to be the next party leader and Prime Minister have been threatened they will be “de-selected” unless they change their allegiance to Liz Truss.

De-selection means sitting MPs will be dumped before the next general election in 2024 in favour of more pliant candidates who will do what they are told by their constituency associations and back Truss.

This has been revealed by the Guardian, which says that the Truss team are putting pressure on Sunak-supporting MPs to defect to their side.

According to an exclusive report, Tory MPs “told the Guardian that some Sunak-backing backbench colleagues had now endorsed Truss after being threatened with deselection by constituency parties that are supporting the foreign secretary”.

Opinion polls of party members suggest that Truss is leading Rishi by a wide margin. What is odd is that at almost every husting that has taken place, Rishi has appeared to be ahead. Certainly, there has been nothing to indicate that Truss was ahead by 80 per cent to 20 per cent.

Tory MPs were expected to go back to their constituencies and try and convince members to vote for whichever of the two candidates they were supporting.

But it seems behind the scenes, the Truss team are encouraging Right-wing constituency associations to take the initiative and threaten unhelpful Tory MPs with deselection.

The Guardian report said: “A veteran political strategist who used to work for Boris Johnson has been phoning senior Conservatives currently supporting Rishi Sunak to persuade them to back Liz Truss for Prime Minister.

“Mark Fullbrook, who ran the prime minister’s successful leadership bid in 2019, has been playing a key role in the foreign secretary’s bid to win over more high-profile Tory MPs to cement her frontrunner status.

“Sunak topped the final round of the MPs’ vote with the backing of 137, while Truss came second with 113 votes, just beating Penny Mordaunt, an early favourite, who picked up 105 supporters. However, the polls have consistently suggested that the foreign secretary is well ahead among party members.