Uk politics

Friday

Matthew Lynn

The myth of the Brexit cliff edge

From our UK edition

The ports will be clogged up with lorries. The shelves at Tesco will be empty. Doctors will be rationing antibiotics, and the army will be called out to deliver food. As we approach the deadline for our departure from the European Union, as the Prime Minister returns empty handed yet again from yet another catastrophic round of negotiations in Brussels, and as the cliff-edge gets closer and closer, the conventional wisdom is that the pressure on Britain to agree to something – anything! – becomes more and more intense. And yet, as so often in the through-the-looking glass world of Brexit, that conventional wisdom is a bit off target. And not just by a little as it happens, but by 180 degrees.

Robert Peston

Theresa May’s catastrophic night in Brussels

From our UK edition

It has been a catastrophic night for the Prime Minister here in Brussels. She was rebuffed by EU leaders in her request for a few weeks of fresh work by officials to formulate words of what she called “reassurance”, such that Tory Brexiter and DUP MPs could be confident that the backstop they hate would only ever be short lived if implemented. “We do not want the UK to think there can be any form of renegotiation whatsoever” said EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. This means that the PM knows that, as and when she puts her Brexit plan to the Commons for a vote, more than 100 of her MPs will vote against it, plus the DUP and the opposition parties. She would lose by a colossal and humiliating margin of more than 200 votes.

Katy Balls

Brussels reject Theresa May’s plea for backstop concessions

From our UK edition

Theresa May's week has gone from bad to worse. In order to win the confidence vote tabled against her on Wednesday, May had to make several promises to her MPs: not to fight the next election, to get the DUP back on side – and to find a legally binding solution to the Irish backstop. The latter pledge appears to have already hit the buffers after a disastrous night for May at the EU council summit. The Prime Minister attended the summit on Wednesday evening in the hope of securing new concessions to her Brexit deal. She asked the EU 27 to 'work together intensely' to tweak the deal – with the UK suggesting a new target for a trade deal by the end of 2021, in order to show the backstop was not indefinite.

Thursday

Katy Balls

Tory pressure mounts on May to axe Karen Bradley

From our UK edition

How can Theresa May regain the confidence of the 117 Tory MPs who voted against her leadership? A big part of May's pitch to her party on Wednesday night was that she would repair relations with the DUP – after the confidence and supply agreement broke down over the backstop. One idea now gaining momentum with senior Conservatives of how to do that is to dump Karen Bradley as Northern Ireland secretary, as part of a mini-reshuffle to show May is listening to MPs' concerns. After the Prime Minister limped home in Wednesday's confidence vote, there is deep unrest over May's leadership. Rather than quash the Brexit rebels, it's become clear that the concern over her premiership goes beyond the European Research Group of Eurosceptic MPs.

Isabel Hardman

Tory whips had already planned to reinstate Charlie Elphicke before confidence vote

From our UK edition

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?

Robert Peston

Theresa May’s Brexit aim is no longer Mission Impossible

From our UK edition

Politics is all about words, which only sometimes mean what they seem to say. So if you took what the DUP leader in Westminster said on my show last night you would think that just maybe there is a route through the current parliamentary chaos for the PM towards a Brexit deal that MPs could approve. The DUP’s Nigel Dodds told me: “Well I think that the Prime Minister if I may say so maybe is extending a bit of an olive branch to us in the sense that she is now sitting down with us, acknowledging that we have an issue, acknowledging that it’s not just an issue we have but many in her party are now saying that she’s listening and she’s now prepared to go out she says to get those legal changes that are necessary.

John Osullivan

Theresa May has won but at the price of boxing herself in

From our UK edition

Theresa May’s victory in the 1922 committee confidence vote is one of those boxing matches that leaves both sides preparing for an early rematch—with the challengers somewhat more eager for one than the champion. The defeated Noes got 37 per cent of the vote, according to the numerate Tim Stanley, of an electorate that provided a 100 per cent turnout of Tory MPs. That’s seventeen votes short of a two-thirds majority for the Prime Minister compared to John Major’s achievement of getting four votes more than that traditionally decisive margin in 1995. Her critics got about the same percentage of the non-payroll vote.

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Victory? No, yesterday’s result weakens May’s authority still further

From our UK edition

Theresa May has survived the vote, but her authority is weakened still further. More than a third of Tory MPs have voted against her and this is after she pledged not to fight the next election and to get legally enforceable changes to the backstop. If May had kept the number of those voting against her below 100, it would have been a good result for her. If she had kept it to below 80, it would have strengthened her position considerably. But anything over 105 was always going to be tricky for her as that meant a 1/3rd of her MPs didn’t have confidence in her. This became truer as the day went on and May offered concessions to try and win over wavering MPs.

Steerpike

Watch: Anna Soubry rows with fellow Tory MP

From our UK edition

Theresa May has survived a vote of confidence but the Tory party is not a happy place. Anna Soubry and Robert Buckland have just had a very public row on Sky News. It's safe to say the two Tory MPs did not see eye-to-eye about what should happen next. Buckland told Soubry that it was 'time to move on'. But Soubry said the PM was just offering more of the same 'empty rhetoric': Soubry: 'Let me finish please' Buckland: 'This is time for compromise not for people taking artificial lines and looking for nirvana' Soubry later appeared to mutter that her colleague's words were 'absolute rubbish'. Oh dear..

Isabel Hardman

After a day of high drama, nothing has changed

From our UK edition

Even before the result of the Tory no confidence vote was announced, the mood in Committee Room 14 was rather jovial. Chief Whip Julian Smith appeared minutes before the result, looking both exhausted and happy. Nerves were sufficiently calm for someone to crack a joke in the pause between Sir Graham Brady arriving and him starting to speak. 'Let us pray!' they quipped, sending the room into fits of giggles. In fact, the mood was almost eerily cheery, a bit like someone who has spent all night awake drinking coffee. When Brady announced that the Conservative party does indeed have confidence in Theresa May, the Tory MPs present broke into loud and pointed cheers.

Steerpike

Watch: Jacob Rees-Mogg calls on Theresa May to go

From our UK edition

Theresa May has survived the vote of confidence in her leadership, but Jacob Rees-Mogg has insisted the Prime Minister should still quit. The Tory Brexiteer said that the result was 'terrible' for the PM, pointing out that many of those who backed her were 'on the payroll': 'The PM must realise under most constitutional norms she ought to go and see the Queen urgently and resign' May has won a battle, but her critics are determined not to back down just yet...

Lloyd Evans

Corbyn plays into May’s hands at PMQs

From our UK edition

Bad 24 hours for Mrs May. A last-minute Christmas shopping-trip to Europe yielded no bargains whatever, even though she had £39bn to splurge on an extension to her premiership. Back home she found a conspiracy of seditious Tories baying for her resignation. The Queen of Narnia is a masochist. She finds punishment stimulating, and perhaps slightly addictive, so she showed up at PMQs looking calm and expectant. Her mood was buttressed by certainty. This evening her fate will be decided. All she has to lose is everything, but the result is out of her hands. This probably settled her nerves. ‘Brazen it out’, was her only tactic today.

Brendan O’Neill

Why Theresa May must go

From our UK edition

Theresa May has got to go. She has got to go because she has failed British democracy, failed the British people, and reneged on the Conservative Party’s own manifesto promise to leave both the Customs Union and the Single Market. She has got to go because 17.4m Britons, the largest democratic bloc in British history, voted to ‘Take back control’ and she responded by ceding even more control to Brussels. She has got to go because the British people clearly want someone to stand up to Brussels, yet she bows and scrapes before Brussels, capitulating to its every undemocratic demand and conspiring in its stitch-up of Brexit. Yet the expectation is that she will survive this evening’s confidence vote.

Charles Moore

Four points for Tory MPs to consider before voting tonight

From our UK edition

If I were a Tory MP, I would be worried by the timing of this vote, but, given that it is happening, I would think the following: 1. She's trying to bounce me by making me vote tonight. 2. This is the last chance for a year, because Theresa May is rule-bound and not one to take hints. 3. I do not, in fact, have confidence in her, and so, since I'm being asked, I should say so. 4. Although I do think she is sincere in wishing to deliver what people voted for, we have learnt that she doesn't know how to do this. We urgently need a Prime Minister who does. I am conscious that there is no guarantee that my vote would bring what I want, but I would reluctantly prefer the uncertainty of a contest to the certainty of Mrs May in Downing Street.

Isabel Hardman

Heavy-handed rebel operation in no confidence vote deters Tory MPs

From our UK edition

One of the factors driving wavering Tory MPs towards saying they will vote for Theresa May tonight is the way in which the rebel operation appears to be being conducted. It's not just that the airwaves were dominated this morning by rather strident Brexiteers as opposed to MPs from a range of persuasions. It's also the heavy-handed language that May's opponents are using behind the scenes as they argue with colleagues. A number of MPs tell me they have been galvanised to support May after a 'fairly brutal' exchange in the Conservative MPs WhatsApp group in which Nadine Dorries, who has long called on May to consider her position, managed to insult her colleagues.

Isabel Hardman

Number 10: Confidence vote is not about who leads the Tories into the next election

From our UK edition

Theresa May doesn't see today's vote of no confidence as being about who will lead the Conservative party into the next election, her spokesman has just said. This is significant as it removes the possibility that the Prime Minister sees today's result as being a mandate for her continuing as leader, when many Tory MPs do not want her to. This therefore makes it much easier for those MPs to support the Prime Minister this evening. Speaking to journalists after Prime Minister's Questions, her spokesman said: 'She does not believe that this vote today is about who leads the party into the next election. It is about whether it is sensible to change leader now.

Katy Balls

How the Brexiteer rebels’ gamble could backfire

From our UK edition

As things stand, the number of MPs who have come out publicly to say they will back Theresa May in a confidence vote is enough to keep her in place. However, given that it is a secret ballot and there are still five hours to go until that vote, plenty could change between now and then. Whips are nervous about the middle chunk of MPs – who tend not to kick off – but have so far failed to raise their head above the parapet to back May. But should there be no nasty surprises for May between now and the vote, the Brexiteer gamble could backfire. If May does win the vote, it doesn't get any easier for her to pass her deal with Tory support – in fact, it gets harder.

Ross Clark

Is business really that bothered by the prospect of May’s departure?

From our UK edition

The world of business is, apparently, appalled by the actions of the 48 or more Conservative MPs who have triggered a vote of no confidence in Theresa May as Conservative leader. According to the Institute of Directors, its members are ‘tearing their hair out’ over today’s news. The message seems to be that a change of Prime Minister is an unwanted distraction when the country is already in a state of crisis. Yet markets seem to disagree. The FTSE this morning is up by more than one per cent. However negatively bosses might see the potential end of Theresa May as Prime Minister, investors in their companies seem to be taking a rather more positive view. It is not the first time that a divergence has emerged between business leaders and investors over Brexit.

Isabel Hardman

How the Tory vote of no confidence in Theresa May will work

From our UK edition

Two Tory MPs who are currently suspended from the party whip could be brought back in order to take part in today's vote of no confidence against Theresa May, 1922 Committee Chair Graham Brady revealed this morning. Briefing journalists on the vote, Brady said he was waiting for confirmation from the Chief Whip of the size of the Tory party electoral roll, and that it depended on whether Charlie Ephicke or Andrew Griffiths had the whip restored. Both men were suspended following allegations of sexual harassment, though the Conservative party concluded in November that no further action would be taken against Griffiths. Brady also said that any MPs who were unable to return to Westminster for the vote would be able to apply for a proxy vote by 4pm today, with the result announced at 9pm.

Alex Massie

Ditching Theresa May achieves nothing

From our UK edition

Theresa May has failed. That is no longer in doubt. Nor is there any prospect of resurrection. Her credibility within the Conservative party, the House of Commons, and the country at large is shot. The only thing propping up her Government is the fear that allowing it to collapse completely would invite Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street. That, for the time being, is something even this deranged iteration of the Conservative party is not prepared to countenance. As a matter of party politics, May has been on some kind of unofficial probation ever since last year’s disastrous general election. In office, certainly, but only tolerated grudgingly.