Theresa May will not call a snap election despite former Tory leader Lord Hague’s suggestion that securing a bigger Commons majority would make it easier to deliver a successful Brexit, Downing Street sources have indicated.

A Number 10 source said the Prime Minister has been “clear and consistent in her position: that she does not think there should be” an early general election, while another spokesman added: “It’s not going to happen.”

Lord Hague’s intervention came as Mrs May was bracing herself for defeat in the House of Lords over Brexit, with many peers demanding Parliament gets a “meaningful” vote on the final exit deal.

The ex-foreign secretary said the PM could reduce the risk of further parliamentary stand-offs over Brexit if she won a “decisive” majority and warned her that different factions will inevitably find parts of the exit deal “difficult to stomach”.

Lord Hague is the most senior Conservative figure to join the calls for an early election, which many in the party believe will deliver a thumping victory for Mrs May given Labour’s dire showings in opinion polls.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s insistence that he can win should also make it easier for the Government to get the two-thirds majority in the Commons required to call an election under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, which otherwise sets out that the next vote will be in 2020.

Writing in the Telegraph, Lord Hague urged Mrs May to repeal the Act in the interests of the country as it leaves the EU.

“We have a new Prime Minister and Cabinet facing the most complex challenges of modern times: Brexit negotiations, the Trump administration, the threat from Scottish nationalists, and many other issues,” he said.

“There is no doubt that they would be in a stronger position to take the country through these challenges successfully if they had a large and decisive majority in the Commons and a new full term ahead of them.”

Ahead of the expected clash between peers and the Government over Parliament’s role in approving the final Brexit deal, Lord Hague went on: “Any deal is bound to be full of compromises which one group or another in Parliament finds difficult to stomach.

“As British law needs to be amended countless times to take account of leaving the EU treaties, the Government could face many close votes, concessions or defeats as it tries to implement Brexit.”

“That prospect will embolden the EU negotiators, and makes an agreement that is good for the UK harder to achieve.

“It could also lead to a situation where the Prime Minister faces a stand-off with Parliament over a deal that will have taken two years to negotiate and is nearly impossible to change.”

The Lords is expected to vote at around 5pm on Tuesday on an amendment calling for Westminster to be given a “meaningful” vote on the withdrawal agreement secured by the PM during negotiations under Article 50 of the EU treaties.

Mrs May has promised Parliament a vote, but only on a “take it or leave it” basis, which would see the UK crash out of the EU without a deal if MPs reject the agreement she obtains.

But opposition members have argued Mrs May’s position that “no deal is better than a bad deal” risks a sudden “cliff-edge” move on to WTO tariffs which would harm the UK economy.

A Labour Lords source told the Press Association the party was confident its amendment on a meaningful vote would deliver “another likely handsome defeat for the Government, given the developing cross-party campaign on this issue”.

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Tory former health secretary Lord Lansley backed Lord Hague and said Mrs May has a window of opportunity for a general election before the EU “gets its act together” for Brexit talks later this year.

The peer, who as an ex-Commons leader has experience of organising government business, said Tory MPs will realise that it will be easier to conduct negotiations and ensure the passage of the Great Repeal Bill, which transposes all EU law into UK law, if the PM has a personal mandate and bigger majority.

But he admitted that at present the idea of a snap election does not have widespread support, telling BBC Radio 4’s World At One programme: “I would say (it is a view) not very widely shared; specifically I think not very widely shared amongst Conservative Members of Parliament who feel they’ve got a job to do, they’ve got to get on with it, they’ve got to secure the deal.

“I think, however, it will become apparent to them during the passage of the so-called Great Repeal Bill that trying to manage the negotiations and the legislative context of those with a small majority becomes increasingly difficult.

“And I don’t think you can leap into an election for example in the course of next year because it turns it into an election about the outcome of the negotiations, which is not the point - the point is to have a mandate to start the negotiations.”

Another former Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith, disagreed with Lord Hague, saying it would be wrong to take a break from the Brexit process.

He told the BBC’s Daily Politics: “I don’t agree with William, I’m afraid, on this; I think that I agree with Theresa May, I think that the British public would have a pretty dim view of us because there seems to be a short-term advantage.”

He added: “The British people have a right to expect that we govern to get that (Brexit) sorted, to break in the middle of that and say let’s have a hiatus for three, four, five weeks while we go to the polls, leave all of that hanging, I think would be wrong.”