EU bosses fear Theresa May is leading the UK towards a no-deal Brexit at the end of June because she will not ask for enough extra time they believe she needs.

Senior officials believe a delay to the UK’s exit date of March 29 is now inevitable.

But they fear that the PM's strategy of seeking simply to survive from day to day will lead to her requesting an inadequate short three-month extension for fear of enraging Tory Brexiteers.

This afternoon Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, became the first cabinet minister to admit that the two years of negotiations allowed under article 50 may have to be prolonged, describing the current Brexit impasse as “a very challenging situation”.

EU sources suggested that it was unlikely that the heads of state and government of the 27 member states would reject such a request given the pressure that would be applied from the business community.

The EU's deputy chief negotiator, Sabine Weyand, said on Monday that the EU’s heads of state and government would need information on “the purpose of an extension”, adding: “The idea of going into serial extensions really isn’t very popular in the EU27.”

Mujtaba Rahman, a former Treasury and European commission official, who is head of Europe for the Eurasia Group risk consultancy, said: “There’s a growing realisation in the EU that the UK might need longer to get its house in order than the UK itself realises.

“The bar to extending article 50 for the EU will be quite low - leaders love to kick the can. If there is a contentious issue, it’s more about the length of any article 50 extension as opposed to the principle of whether there should be one.”

May is getting ready to head back to Brussels in an attempt to reopen the Brexit deal after parliament voted to replace the Irish backstop in the withdrawal agreement with an “alternative arrangement”.

Brexiteers fear that the backstop, which would keep the UK in a customs union unless an alternative solution can similarly avoid a hard border on Ireland, will stand in the way of the forging of an independent trade policy.

In a call with Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, yesterday May was asked to come up with “concrete proposals”.

Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, tweeted, following a phonecall with the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker that Brexit was “now in final phase”.

“The EU is united; the withdrawal agreement is the best and only deal on the table. Awaiting proposal from UK that is acceptable to EU and will enable ratification in the UK,” he said.