BORIS Johnson has given a “guarantee” that none of the 21 Brexit rebels will be able to return to the Conservative fold as seething anger bubbled up within Tory ranks about the way their colleagues had been sacked from the party.

The Tory in-fighting spilled over into the Commons when former minister Margot James hit out at Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s de facto chief of staff, regarded as the driving force behind Downing St’s more aggressive approach to policy, including the move to suspend Parliament.

Referring to Margaret Thatcher’s famous quote, she said: “Advisers advise, ministers decide. Can I ask the Prime Minister to bear that statement closely in mind in relation to his own chief adviser, Dominic Cummings?” MPs applauded her intervention.

Elsewhere, veteran Tory, Sir Roger Gale, called on his party leader to sack Mr Cummings, whom he branded an “unelected foul-mouthed oaf”.

Most of the rebels are former ministers, including ex-Chancellors Ken Clarke and Philip Hammond, David Gauke, the former Justice Secretary, Dominic Grieve, the former Attorney General, Sir Oliver Letwin, the former Cabinet Office Minister, and Sir Nicolas Soames, the former Defence Minister.

Ruth Davidson, the ex-Scottish Conservative leader, expressed the dismay which many Tories felt at the sackings when she tweeted: “How, in the name of all that is good and holy, is there no longer room in the Conservative Party for @NSoames? #anofficerandagentleman."

Tory peer, Lord Kenneth Baker, a former Tory Chairman, condemned Mr Johnson's treatment of rebel MPs and called on Central Office to allow them to stand again at the next election.

In a stinging assessment, the Tory grandee who served as a minister in the Thatcher Government said: "These 21 MPs are not parvenus seeking to infiltrate the party, they are lifelong Tories in their mind and in their bones."

He warned the party owed its success to being a broad church which had kept policy decisions out of the hands of "swivel-eyed ideologues".

And the grandee called for them to be able to stand as Tories at the next election if they are selected by their local party associations.

He added: "The success of the Conservative Party over 300 years is due to being always a broad church accommodating the diverse interests, concerns and views of individuals who nonetheless support the party as an instrument for good government and for wise political change on the big issues of the time.”

But after the PM addressed the Conservative backbench 1922 Committee, Daniel Kawczynski, the Shrewsbury MP, said he had been assured that the rebels would not be let back into the party.

"I pleaded with the Prime Minister not to restore the whip to any Conservative Member of Parliament who has undermined him in these negotiations with the European Union and he's given me an assurance that the whip will not be restored. These people cannot stand for the Conservative Party again," declared the backbencher.

Pressed on what the PM said to him, Mr Kawczynski replied: "He gave me a guarantee."

He conceded that he was “completely outnumbered" and many colleagues made the opposite argument to his own.

“The mood in the party is that the whip should be restored but there's a sizeable minority of Conservative MPs like me who feel the whole credibility of discipline in the party will be destroyed if the Prime Minister backs down," he added.

Rory Stewart, the former International Development Secretary, who was among those who had the whip withdrawn, said he had been informed by text.

The Borders MP said the decision to throw him out of the party was "astonishing, noting how it was something "you associate with other countries" rather than Britain. "This is not a Conservative way of behaving,” he declared.

The Scot claimed there were another 30 or 40 Tory MPs who agreed entirely with the rebels but did not vote with them “partly because the threat being made here is terrible for people".

He added: “It is not just that they were threatened with losing their incomes and jobs but people feel deeply loyal to the Conservative Party; they want to give the Prime Minister a chance, they don't want to bring in a Jeremy Corbyn government.”

Conservative associations in constituencies held by Tory rebels have already been told to find new candidates to replace the “disloyal” MPs.

Local party members in Mr Hammond's Surrey seat have been ordered to find a new candidate less than 48 hours after they officially re-selected the former Chancellor and long-serving MP.

Conservatives in Sir Nicholas’s long-held Mid Sussex constituency have begun the search for a new candidate. Charles Worsley, chairman of the local Conservative association, thanked the grandson of Sir Winston Churchill for his service but confirmed the process to replace him had started.

The 71-year-old MP, who announced he would not stand at the next election, explained how he was “approaching the end of 37 years' service to this House, of which I have been proud and honoured beyond words to be a member,” but he added: "I am truly very sad that it should end in this way."