Nigel Farage has delivered a letter to Number 10, demanding the Brexit Party have a seat at the negotiating table.

Clearly trolling the prime minister on her last day as leader of the Conservative Party, Mr Farage and party chairman Richard Tice MEP delivered the letter, which was also sent to all of the Tory Party leadership candidates.

It read: “As you know the Brexit Party won the European elections by a very substantial margin.

“We stood on a platform with three simple messages — restore trust in democracy, a WTO Brexit, and some of our elected MEPs to play a significant role negotiating from here.”

“We now have the most recent, and winning democratic mandate on Brexit,” the letter continued, adding that if the first past the post system had been used, the Brexit Party would have a parliamentary majority of over 240 seats.

“The electorate have asked for us to come into the negotiating team and we are ready to do so immediately. This is especially the case given the lack of activity and focus, due to the leadership contest.

“We should firstly review the state of No Deal preparations and help advance them as required, to give confidence to the nation that we will be fully ready.”

Before signing off, Mr Farage, on top form, added that: “I trust you will agree that the country should not have to suffer the further uncertainty of having to beg for another delay beyond October 31st 2019.”

Despite losing the Peterborough by-election Thursday night to the Labour Party — with a very narrow margin of just 683 votes — the Brexit Party leader was buoyant as he addressed media, with Mr Farage saying that he has members of his team from the business community ready to work on future trade deals.

“We’ve got 55 days now of total impasse while the government spends time working out who the next prime minister is. We’ve only got less than five months until we’re due to leave. We’d love to start helping now,” Mr Farage said.

Asked whether he was disappointed with last night’s result, Mr Farage said he did not see it as a loss in traditional terms, rather that the results were “astonishing”, given the party is just eight weeks old today, and came out ahead of two establishment parties, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats.

Party morale should remain unaffected by the setback, with a YouGov poll published last night placing the Brexit Party in the lead at 26 per cent — six points ahead of Labour and the Liberal Democrats which came jointly at 20 per cent, with the Tories in third on 18 per cent.