Any Conservatives thinking about joining rivals UKIP "must be utterly nuts", Boris Johnson has claimed.
The Tory London mayor suggested would-be switchers wanted the country to "sleepwalk into a Labour government".
But, writing in the Daily Telegraph, he said press reports of more defections in the offing were "fanciful".
It comes after two Conservative MPs in one month - first Douglas Carswell and, over the weekend, Mark Reckless - left for Nigel Farage's Eurosceptic party.
End Quote Boris Johnson Mayor of LondonYou kip if you want to; the rest of us are going to fight and win"
The defections have caused "unconstrained fury" in the Conservative leadership, the BBC's political editor Nick Robinson said.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, former Environment Secretary Owen Paterson said the Conservatives had to be "absolutely clear" to people who could switch to UKIP.
He added: "We have got to be respectful of them and we have got to make a very clear, intelligent case that the only national organisation that can resolve the long-term problems of the UK is the Conservative Party."
'Disagree vehemently'Mr Johnson has been adopted as the party's candidate in the north-west London seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip at the next general election.
He has denied this is part of a plan for succeeding David Cameron, but his father, former MEP Stanley Johnson, told the BBC he believed his son could still become leader of the Conservative Party.
Mr Reckless, MP for Rochester and Strood, announced he was making the switch on the eve of his former party's conference.
Ahead of his address to delegates in Birmingham, Mr Johnson used his weekly newspaper column to appeal to any of his colleagues thinking of following suit.
"Let me try to reason with any in my party, the folk who want to launch themselves headlong into the silage, because I genuinely think that they (if they indeed exist) must be utterly nuts," he wrote.
Mr Johnson, whose speeches have become an annual conference highlight for activists, said only Mr Cameron or his Labour counterpart Ed Miliband were "in a position" to become prime minister.
"I know that you disagree vehemently with most of what Ed Miliband says and does - and so I must urge you not to allow the disaster of a Miliband premiership," he went on.
"If you really want to let this country sleepwalk into a Labour government, then that is your prerogative. You can close your eyes and let it happen. You kip if you want to; the rest of us are going to fight and win."
His intervention comes as the Conservatives look to turn minds to policy and the 2015 general election, after Mr Reckless's defection and the resignation of cabinet office minister Brooks Newmark over a newspaper report that he had sent explicit pictures of himself to an undercover journalist.
Chancellor George Osborne is set to announce that a 55% tax on "defined contribution" pension pots is to be abolished.
The party has also announced pledges on welfare and help for first-time buyers.
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