Conservative party

Dear Prime Minister. It is with regret that we are writing to resign the Conservative whip and our membership of the Party. We voted for you as Leader and Prime Minister because we believed you were committed to a moderate, open-hearted Conservative Party in the One Nation tradition. A party of economic competence representing the best of British business, delivering good jobs, opportunity and prosperity for all, funding world class public services and tackling inequalities. We had hoped you would also continue to modernise our party so that it could reach out and broaden its appeal to younger voters and to embrace and reflect the diversity of the communities we seek to represent.

After Theresa May mysteriously evaporated from the Commons following tonight's government defeat, Downing Street has issued a statement insisting that nothing has changed. The official line is, somewhat tortuously, that the previous set of indicative votes from MPs were the ones that mattered, whereas this one didn't. A No.10 spokesman said: 'While we didn't secure the support of the Commons this evening, the Prime Minister continues too believe, and the debate itself indicated, that far from objecting to securing changes to the backstop that will allow us to leave with a deal, there was a concern from some Conservative colleagues about taking no deal off the table at this stage.

Theresa May has just given a statement in Downing Street in which she apparently said absolutely nothing. The Prime Minister walked out to the lectern outside No.10 and offered the sort of update on her diary that is normally sent out by email from the Downing Street press office. She said that she had held talks this evening 'with the leader of the Liberal Democrats, and the Westminster leaders of the SNP and Plaid Cymru', adding that 'I am disappointed that the leader of the Labour Party has not so far chosen to take part'. After a day of complaining that the Prime Minister hadn't yet picked up the phone to him, Jeremy Corbyn has refused to meet May until she rules out a no-deal Brexit.

MPs have been expressing their fury today that the vote of no confidence in Theresa May allowed two suspended Tories to rejoin the party. Andrew Griffiths and Charlie Elphicke had both had the Conservative whip removed over claims of inappropriate sexual behaviour, but were reinstated yesterday so that they could vote. Labour's Shadow Women and Equalities Minister Dawn Butler described it as a 'betrayal of women', adding 'how can Theresa May call herself a feminist when she lets an MP who was suspended back into the Conservative party to vote for her in the leadership challenge?

Could the government have avoided this afternoon’s contempt motion? MPs have voted in favour of holding ministers in contempt of parliament for refusing to publish the Brexit legal advice, and the simple argument is that the only way to avoid this whole debacle would have been to publish the advice. This is, after all, what the Commons voted for, yet ministers chose instead to publish a summary. But a number of the speeches today hinted at a problem that goes far deeper than just the government ignoring the humble address demanding the publication.

It only took a few lines of Theresa May's statement to the House of Commons on her Brexit deal before MPs started making dissenting noises all around her. The Prime Minister started by listing the ways in which the deal 'takes back control' for the British people, telling MPs that this included control of Britain's borders, ending the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, an end to 'vast annual payments we send to Brussels', protecting jobs through a new Free Trade Area, protecting the country's security and maintaining 'the integrity of our United Kingdom, meeting our commitments in Northern Ireland and delivering for the whole UK family, including our Overseas Territories'.

Is Theresa May about to face a vote of no confidence in her leadership? The Prime Minister is acting as though nothing has changed, to coin a phrase, focusing on selling her Brexit plan to business leaders at the CBI, rather than getting too bogged down with the internal problems with her party. But those trying to organise the move against her had been making noises all day that they may have the requisite number of letters calling for such a vote by this evening. This doesn’t look like it’s going to be the case. Indeed, today a number of Brexiteers including Owen Paterson and Iain Duncan Smith have been holding talks in Number 10 along with David Trimble about a proposed solution to the Brexit deal that might prevent a leadership contest.

The consensus in the Conservative party is that Theresa May's visit to the 1922 Committee last night hasn't materially changed anything. Those who want her gone are still plotting her demise. A larger group of her MPs are very frustrated and unhappy. And there are still a good number of loyalists prepared to make supportive noises about the Prime Minister in the Chamber or 'crunch' meetings like the one last night. What this does suggest is that there won't be another flood of letters calling for a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister, though the working theory remains that it is more likely that the threshold of 48 is reached by accident rather than as a result of a concerted campaign.

Theresa May is to face her MPs at the 1922 Committee tomorrow, it has been confirmed. There had been calls for the Prime Minister to do so, after feverish speculation that Tory MPs were plotting to remove her because of her disappointing Brexit performance. She has clearly decided to take on those critics and face her party, rather than hide and hope that this is all going to go away. One of the reasons MPs are increasingly dissatisfied with the Prime Minister is that she isn't offering any sense of progress towards a deal, and there will again be demands for her to show that she will win a concession from Brussels and secure a deal.

Theresa May's Hell Week 2.0 has aptly ended with a Conservative backbencher branding the current operation a 'sh-t-show'. In an interview with The House magazine, Johnny Mercer has let rip – complaining that were he not a Conservative MP he wouldn't vote Conservative. Mercer says the party's values have changed since the Cameron days and if he weren't an MP already 'there would be absolutely no chance that I would try and be a Member of Parliament' in the current climate. Mercer also rules out taking a job in the current administration – though it's safe to presume that No 10 won't be particularly minded to give one to him after this outburst. So, is Mercer throwing his toys out of the pram – or does this intervention touch on a wider problem?

Cabinet ministers toddled up Downing Street this morning in a largely good mood. Most of them were relieved that last week's Conservative conference hadn't been the catastrophe that everyone had expected, and many were even happier that the conference had closed with Theresa May declaring that austerity is over. Of course, one of their number will be feeling rather less comfortable with that: Philip Hammond will now have to sift through even more bids from his ministerial colleagues for more funding, now that they believe they could be in line for the dividends of the end of austerity. The Chancellor now needs to work out a way of fobbing off those colleagues - and then justifying this to the Commons when he makes his Budget statement at the end of this month.

How does Theresa May plan to reinvigorate her party and send it out, united and happy, after this week's conference? If the extracts of her speech that have been trailed tonight are anything to go by, it's not clear that the Prime Minister knows how to answer that question, either. It's either the case that May is holding back a series of announcements for the speech itself or for individual newspapers, or that she is planning to make motherhood and apple pie look controversial in comparison to the epithets she is going to deliver. The Prime Minister will tell the country that 'our best days lie ahead of us and that our future is full of promise'.