The whispered lobbying of Theresa May’s enemies in the Westminster tea room, Christmas drinks receptions and in the coffee queue contained one killer argument to persuade wavering colleagues – do you want this prime minister to lead us into the next election?
Hard Brexiters wanting to dislodge the prime minister knew that was the one thing niggling in the back of their colleagues’ minds. It might be a risk now, but would a victory mean May saw it as a mandate to lead indefinitely? Many of the most mild-mannered MPs in parliament were worried about that.
The rug was pulled from under her enemies’ feet when the prime minister made her pledge to Conservative colleagues, many still bruised from 2017, that she would not fight the next election.
“There were waverers in the room, quiet ones,” an MP said afterwards. “It was not easy at all. There were moments where she held the room, she lost it, and she took it back again. But she did win them over. Many people praised her stamina.”
Yet the most cutting comment in the privacy of the 1922 Committee room still rang true for a lot of Tory MPs. “Stamina is not a strategy,” the MP Lee Rowley told May.
May won the vote, but 117 colleagues voted against her. It is far more than the 104 colleagues who have declared they will vote against her Brexit deal. Her central problem remains unchanged.
As he stood at the front of committee room 14 to announce the result, it was the end of a tortuous six months for Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, and the only man who tracks the number of letters to trigger a no-confidence vote.
With no one else to share the task, the MP has patiently and politely answered questions on the subject for many months. Yet on Tuesday night, the speculation became so intense that he said he wanted to “smash his phone into smithereens”.
Brady told reporters that the threshold for confidence letters had clearly been exceeded during the course of Tuesday, but some had also been withdrawn. “It isn’t like a thermometer outside the local hospital showing how much money has been raised,” he said.
“It can go down as well as up. But during the course of yesterday we reached a point where it was clear the threshold had been passed – though with an element of traffic in both directions.”
He phoned the prime minister directly at about 9.30pm. Their conversation was “businesslike”, and Brady suggested he had not disclosed to the prime minister exactly how many letters over the threshold there were. They agreed the announcement should be made early – before the markets opened.
The chief whip, Julian Smith, then phoned cabinet ministers late on Tuesday night. Early on Wednesday morning, Brady emailed all Conservative MPs and the news exploded.
As reporters and MPs arrived in Westminster, some noticed Boris Johnson’s bicycle already propped up on the rack. The faces of would-be leadership challengers seemed suddenly to be everywhere.
In the nexus of Westminster activity, the atrium coffee shop of Portcullis House, Johnson wandered around flanked by Owen Paterson, the former cabinet minister who submitted his letter overnight. The former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab, too, was milling around the tables of MPs and staff drinking coffee.
May began her meetings and calls with Tory colleagues early. As the morning news bulletins began, she began the public fight on the steps of Downing Street, saying that a vote against her would inevitably mean a delay to the date when the UK leaves the EU.
Her allies set about disseminating that message, as her critics began counter-lobbying that a vote for May would be an indefinite endorsement of her leadership and could mean the loss of the DUP, her confidence-and-supply partners, and the Conservative majority, making it impossible to govern.
Ben Bradley, the MP for the marginal seat of Mansfield, had been coaxing colleagues to turn against the prime minister since he submitted his own letter in October. “It’s a strange atmosphere. Colleagues obviously have differing opinions, but one way or another this vote needs to provide direction,” he said.
Others have been warning colleagues that those who risked their parliamentary reputations to oust May could not be counted on to act again if the prime minister chose not to go before the next election. “We are never going to stick our neck on the line again,” one fumed. “If others want her to go, they will have to do it themselves next time.”
At midday, May arrived for prime minister’s questions, but on the edge of the frontbench, the chief whip never paused from texting. In the public gallery sat the prime minister’s husband, Philip May, who never once took his eyes off his wife.
The real bombshell dropped a few minutes after May finished speaking in the House of Commons. It came from a senior Conservative aide to a group of journalists, but it was clearly a deliberate intervention.
“This vote isn’t about who leads the party into the next election, it’s about whether it makes sense to change leader about this point in the Brexit negotiations,” the aide said. It was the heaviest of hints that May would tell MPs that she would not lead them into the next election if that was their choice.
“Does she ever get sick of these bastards?” one journalist asked.
“The PM? No,” her aide replied, to widespread laughter. “I have not heard the prime minister use that. She is not known for her use of colourful language.”
May holed up with her party colleagues, with meetings in her office in parliament behind the Speaker’s chair and in Downing Street. By mid-afternoon, deals were clearly being struck and the mood among her opponents was darkening.
One source said Nadine Dorries had sent an “aggressively partisan” message on the Tory MPs’ WhatsApp group, only to be told: “Give it a rest today”. The remainder of the day’s messages were about the locations of that evening’s drinks parties.
The airwaves turned blue with the sound of open Tory warfare throughout the day. The Brexiter and fierce May critic Andrew Bridgen stormed off a live BBC programme when the Tory vice-chair, James Cleverly, came on.
By mid-afternoon, the prime minister’s anticipated pledge to stand down before the next election was starting to focus some minds. “I have to weigh up her offer of a time-limited transition,” one amused MP quipped.
The narrow corridor of committee rooms in the House of Commons is usually a sedate environment, but in the evening outside the room where May addressed the 1922 Committee, more than 100 reporters were laying siege, climbing on chairs to hold their dictaphones over the crowds as backbenchers held court before going inside.
May slipped inside and delivered her promised pledge – that she would not fight the next election, even though, “in my heart”, she said she wanted to exorcise the demons from the 2017 election and win again.
MPs sat on tables, crouched on the floor and were pinned against the windows. Her critics were muted as they went in. Bridgen arrived late and missed the banging and cheering that had greeted the prime minister. “I wouldn’t have added to it,” he shrugged. David Davis left early with the veteran Eurosceptic Bill Cash. “Good speech,” is all he would say.
Inside the room, most questions were supportive but there was banging to support a question from Rowley, the MP for the marginal seat of North East Derbyshire.
Another MP asked the prime minister to reflect “why we are in this mess”. The digital minister, Margot James, intervened, saying: “David Cameron got us into this mess.”
James was the first in the queue to cast her ballot, along with the prisons minister Rory Stewart, one of May’s most vocal advocates in recent days.
“I think there were a number of people who have come down on her side after that,” James said. “The election pledge took some of the heat out of it, but I was rather sad to hear it. I understand why she thought she needed to say it. The whole thing is very upsetting.”
In a quiet corridor nearby, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, and the chief secretary to the Treasury, Liz Truss, lingered to cast their votes. The chancellor, Philip Hammond, strode in half an hour later. “How are you voting?” one reporter asked. “How am I voting?!” he said, looking shocked. “I’m voting Conservative.”
May herself voted just after 7pm, laughing as journalists asked her how she would vote. Michael Gove, the environment secretary, predicted in the corridor that the prime minister would win “handsomely”. Asked to guess by how many, he said: “I studied English, not maths, so I’ll stick with handsomely.”
She was not in the room as Brady entered to announced the result, pouring a glass of water and taking a piece of paper from his pocket. The roar from Conservative MPs when the result came was deafening. David Gauke, the justice secretary, leaning against the back wall, took a deep intake of breath.
Gavin Williamson, the defence secretary, loudly proclaimed a great victory, even though the prime minister had been told that a third of her party had no confidence in her leadership.
Outside, a disappointed Mark Francois, a deputy chair of the ERG, said everyone needed to “sleep on it”. Damian Green, the ousted ex-cabinet minister who has remained staunchly loyal to May, had a message for him as he went past. “These people say what they want to do is honour a democratic vote,” he said. “I hope they bear that in mind.”
