Kent MPs have rejected calls by the former leader of UKIP Nigel Farage for a second referendum on Brexit.

Mr Farage said he was warming to the idea of another poll but the idea got short shrift from Kent MPs on both sides of the argument.

And it earned a rebuke from the new UKIP leader Henry Bolton and many of his MEP colleagues in Brussels.

Mr Farage, who remains a South East MEP, said that a second vote would kill off opposition to leaving, claiming "the percentage that would vote to leave next time would be very much bigger than it was last time round".

Sittingbourne and Sheppey MP Gordon Henderson said: “I have always been a great supporter and admirer of Nigel Farage but I am becoming slowly less warm now that he has become a caricature of himself to get attention.

"It is a nonsense - we have had a referendum. It is patronising for people to be told they didn't understand what they were voting for.

"They understood very well what they were voting for. They want to leave the EU and that is what we should be doing. There is no point in having another referendum.”

Gillingham MP Rehman Chishti, who has been appointed one of several new vice chairmen of the Conservative party, said: “What I am interested in is what the public voted for and they voted for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union.

"That's on course to happen in 2019. Nigel Farage can say this or that but for me we have to deliver on what the public voted for.”

Helen Whately, MP for Faversham and Mid Kent, said: “I was really surprised to hear Nigel Farage calling for a second referendum. It sounds like he's trying to get back into the headlines again. We have had a referendum so let's not have more uncertainty. Let's get on with it and make sure we have the best possible result.”

UKIP leader Henry Bolton said: “We do not want a second referendum. He was illustrating the point that if the government forces one, then it would give us the opportunity to decisively put it to bed.”

Mr Farage later clarified his comments to say that he had not meant to say that he wanted a second vote but that he feared one would be foisted on the country by the government.