Boris Johnson has pulled out of a conference of northern Tories as activists bid to boost the party's chances of hanging on to the so-called Red Wall.
The Prime Minister had been expected to give a speech at a meeting of the Northern Research Group in Doncaster today as part of a journey to campaign in the Wakefield by-election.
But Downing Street has told the group the PM won't be going after all - with no apparent reason yet given.
It comes after the Prime Minister survived a bruising motion of no confidence in the wake of the Partygate scandal, with 148 of his own MPs voting to oust him as leader.
The NRG group of Tory backbenchers - which acts as a pressure group for Conservatives in the North - is headed by Rossendale and Darwen MP Jake Berry.
He has been calling on the government to introduce a "levelling up formula" for funding in England and devolution deals on demand.
He tweeted this morning welcoming Chancellor Rishi Sunak to the conference.
Mr Johnson, whose birthday is on Sunday, has yet to visit Wakefield - which most pollsters predict the Conservatives will lose to Labour in Thursday's by-election.
The vote was triggered after the former Tory MP Imran Ahmed-Khan was convicted for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy.
The Tories are also defending Tiverton and Honiton after the ex-Tory MP Neil Parish quit after admitting watching porn on his phone in the Commons chamber. It is thought they could lose the Devon constituency to Ed Davey's Lib Dems.
The Prime Minister will also not be attending US President Joe Biden's global climate summit today.
According to an agenda of the online event, seen by Politico, the attendance list for the online meeting includes 17 heads of state and government, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
This comes despite the UK hosting the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow just months ago.
