Exclusive: Eight Tory MPs in talks about defecting to Ukip Mr Wheeler said he has passed on the details to Nigel Farage, Ukip's leader, but had not disclosed MPs" identities to anybody else. He said: "Each was promised by me that I would not tell any of the others, or anybody else except Nigel." Mr Wheeler, who was expelled from the Tory party in 2009 after donating £100,000 to Ukip, stressed that the talks with the eight were only preliminary and there was no guarantee that they would all defect. Asked how many might be persuaded to cross the floor of the House, Mr Wheeler - who backed Liam Fox against David Cameron and David Davis in the 2005 Conservative leadership election - replied: "A few." The last serving Conservative MP to switch sides was Bob Spink, MP for Castle Point in Essex, who resigned the Conservative whip in March 2008 and who defected to Ukip in the following month. He lost the seat in the 2010 election to Tory candidate Rebecca Harris. Attention has focused on Ukip's attractions to the Tory right after a strong performance in the Corby by-election, where it came third ahead of the Liberal Democrats. Polls show support for Ukip is at record levels, with seven to nine per cent of the vote, amid a surge in disillusionment with the EU. An internal briefing note emerged on Monday in which Michael Fabricant MP suggested an electoral pact with Ukip in 2015. Mr Fabricant, a party vice chair for campaigning, suggested the strategy could help win at least 20 seats by dealing with "the continued haemorrhage" of votes to Ukip. This would see the Conservatives and Ukip agreeing not to stand candidates against each other in some seats in return for a "cast-iron" guarantee of a "straight in-out referendum" on Britain's continued membership of the European Union. Mr Fabricant even suggested that Mr Farage - who also indicated he would be keen on pact if Education Secretary Michael Gove replaced David Cameron as Prime Minister - could be offered a seat in the Cabinet if the Conservatives win power outright in 2015. Mr Fabricant was backed by fellow Tory MP Stewart Jackson, who joined calls for a "big, bold offer" to Eurosceptic voters as Ukip has the potential to do "serious damage" to his party at the election. Mr Jackson said he supported the idea of a pact to "reunite the Conservative family on common ground." However Grant Shapps, the party's chairman, said the party "categorically" will not enter any electoral pact with Ukip and played down the significance of mid-term success for Ukip and said an in/out referendum was not the right policy at this stage. He told BBC Radio Four's World At One programme: "I want to win the next election outright of course for the Conservatives so that we have an outright majority and we don't have to be in coalition. But I want to do that with Conservative candidates fighting and winning on their own ground and on their own terms and that is exactly what we are going to do. So I can categorically rule out any form of electoral pact with Ukip or anyone else.