Mayday British PM’s future in doubt
Theresa May survived an attempt by her own MPs to oust her last night but emerged deeply wounded by a result that puts her own future and Brexit itself in doubt.
The prime minister won a confidence vote by 200 to 117, meaning that more than a third of her MPs and well over half of her backbenchers said they wanted her gone.
The result leaves the Conservative Party more divided than ever, with the vote breaking down largely along Leave and Remain lines.
The result will make it harder than ever for May to get her Brexit deal through Parliament, as it suggests that more than 400 MPs would vote against it if it was put before the Commons.
May, who promised not to fight another election in a desperate last-ditch bid to win votes, had to rely on the support of Remainbacking MPs to stay in office, giving them leverage to press her to soften her deal.
Of those MPs who publicly declared their intention to back May before the vote, 131 had backed Remain in the 2016 referendum, while only 31 voted leave.
The number of MPs casting votes against her was higher than expected, and Brexiteers said she should resign now because she had lost the support of her backbenchers.
With 139 MPs on the Government payroll, the result suggests that a considerable majority of backbench MPs voted to get rid of her.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the European Research Group of Brexiteer Tories, called it ‘‘a terrible result for the Prime Minister’’ and said her only option was to resign.
He said May now had two choices – to ‘‘behave like Thatcher’’ and resign within days or behave like John Major, who stayed on after surviving a confidence vote, only to lead the Party to a devastating electoral defeat.
May’s supporters had hoped the vote would clear up her future but instead it served to make it even more opaque. She is now under immense pressure to name the date when she intends to stand down, having fired the starting gun on the race to succeed her.
Before the result was announced, the ERG thought it had persuaded 86 MPs to vote against May. The fact that 31 others joined them could have a profound effect on May’s immediate future.
The result of the ballot means that Tory MPs cannot force another confidence vote in May for another 12 months, but significant dangers to her premiership remain in the coming weeks. Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary, warned that the Cabinet could turn against her if she failed to win concessions from the EU on her Brexit deal, and pressure increased on May from within the Cabinet to insist the Northern Ireland backstop was dropped from her Brexit deal.
Penny Mordaunt, one of the Cabinet ministers tipped as a contender to succeed May, tweeted: ‘‘Now let’s crack on with getting the changes we need to the deal on offer and press on with No Deal preparations.’’
Labour could force a parliamentary confidence vote in the Government within days and May could also be forced out if she loses next month’s delayed vote on her Brexit deal.
The result of the vote prompted comparisons to the demise of Margaret Thatcher, who won 55 per cent of the vote in a leadership challenge in 1990 but was gone two weeks later. Thatcher secured the backing of 104 of her MPs compared with the 200 who supported Mrs May.
– Telegraph Group
‘‘Now let’s crack on with getting the changes we need to the deal on offer and press on with No Deal preparations.’’ Penny Mordaunt, MP