Sir Graham Brady appears to have confirmed Boris Johnson’s claim that he had enough MPs to challenge Rishi Sunak in the leadership election last month.
Mr Johnson dropped out of the Tory leadership race, claiming he had the necessary nominations but was unable to unite the party.
Sir Graham, chair of the Tory party’s 1922 Committee, told the BBC that “two candidates” had reached the threshold, and “one of them decided not to then submit his nomination.”
Sir Graham also spoke about his experiences meeting with former PMs Liz Truss and Mr Johnson at separate stages this year to tell them they no longer commanded majority support from their MPs.
“I was reaching for my phone when I got a message saying the prime minister had asked to see me,” the Altrincham and Sale West MP told BBC North West Tonight.
“When I went in to see her with her chief of staff Mark Fullbrook, she asked me the question – she said ‘it’s pretty bad, isn’t it?’ To which I replied ‘yes, it is pretty bad'”.
“She asked the second question, ‘do you think it’s retrievable?’. And I said ‘no, I don’t think it is’. And she replied that she didn’t either.”
He said Mr Johnson had insisted he was “still determined to go on”, but changed his mind overnight.
After Mr Sunak was made PM uncontested, Mr Johnson tweeted: “Congratulations to Rishi Sunak on this historic day, this is the moment for every Conservative to give our new PM their full and wholehearted support.”
The former premier offered his congratulations a day later than messages from outgoing PM Ms Truss and Mr Sunak’s fellow leadership hopeful, Penny Mordaunt