The Prime Minister addressed the defection, declaring: “The Conservative Party won Bury South for the first time in a generation under this prime minister on an agenda of uniting and levelling up and delivering for the people of Bury South. We will win again in Bury South.”

Tory MPs cheered him from packed benches, some claiming later that the defection had galvanised support for Mr Johnson.

Later in the session, however, Mr Davis, the former Brexit secretary who was once an ally of Mr Johnson, rose to his feet.

“I expect my leaders to shoulder the responsibility for the actions they take,” he said. “Yesterday he did the opposite of that, so I will remind him of a quotation which may be familiar to his ear – Leopold Amery to Neville Chamberlain – ‘You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. In the name of God, go!'”

The comment was a repeat of the words Amery, a former Cabinet minister, uttered during a debate on the progress of the ill-fated Norwegian campaign that helped bring about Chamberlain’s resignation in May 1940.

There were gasps in the Commons as the intervention, which amounted to the first call for Mr Johnson to resign made face-to-face in public, was delivered.

Mr Johnson replied: “What I can tell him is, and I think I have told this House repeatedly, I take full responsibility for everything done in this Government and throughout the pandemic.”