A leading donor to the Conservative Party has said that he urged Iain Duncan Smith to move David Davis from the party chairmanship.

In an interview with the FT, Irvine Laidlaw - the Monaco-based businessman with a fortune estimated at £500 million - said he told Duncan Smith that "from talking to other donors the feeling was that the chairman was not supporting him effectively and that some of the larger donors felt that he ought to do something about it".

In a bizarre sequence of events, the paper reports that Laidlaw later said he could not "put my hand on my heart and say that we actually talked about it".

Ten minutes later the Tory leader's spokesman issued a statement saying he had received no advice on the shadow cabinet reshuffle.