Tory MPs tonight passed a motion of confidence in Boris Johnson’s government - 10 days after ousting him.
Shameless Conservatives united around the PM after a bitter five-hour debate - that heard claims of corruption and tolerance of sexual assault in government.
Only on July 7, the PM announced he will resign after more than 50 of his ministers quit in protest at his handling of allegations against his Deputy Chief Whip.
But he has refused Labour's calls to step down sooner than the planned date of September 6.
Today he took a no-confidence motion - originally proposed by Labour and mentioning him by name, but blocked in that form - and used it as a bid to unite his party.
MPs voted 349-238 to have confidence in the government, without mentioning the PM by name.
If the vote had passed, convention suggests the government would have had to resign or the PM would have had to seek an election.
Lib Dem MP Tim Farron remarked: "Government has not fallen on a vote of confidence… so they can go back to eating each other’s faces off instead."
Backing the motion were 342 Tories, six DUP MPs and independent ex-Tory Rob Roberts. Against it were 183 Labour MPs, 37 SNP, 12 Lib Dems, and smaller groups including Plaid Cymru and Green MP Caroline Lucas.
Sixteen Labour and 14 Tory MPs did not vote - reasons can include being absent or "paired" to an absent MP from the other side.
It came after Boris Johnson falsely boasted he had “delivered on every single promise” in a defiant last big speech in Parliament.
Keir Starmer branded the Prime Minister a “vengeful squatter” as he gave a rambling 44-minute address to MPs - his last major one at the dispatch box before he quits on September 6.
At one point he suggested - without evidence - that Labour’s leader was working with the “deep state” to reverse Brexit and take the UK back into the EU. Keir Starmer has said he will not reverse Brexit.
The “deep state” is a conspiracy theory that claims the organs of the state are populated by secret networks of people working for their own ends.
At another point, he said: “They constantly say we’re not going to build 40 new hospitals, well I can tell him we are”. The total includes redevelopments and new wings at existing hospitals.
And at another he said: "We got Brexit done and though the rejoiners and the revengers were left plotting and planning and biding their time - and I'll have more to say about the events of the last few weeks and months in due course - we delivered on every single one of our promises.”
Manifesto pledges to keep the pensions triple lock, not raise National Insurance, and keep up foreign aid spending were all broken - to name only three.
Brexit negotiations are also not finished, with Britain moving to tear up the Northern Ireland protocol - part of the deal Boris Johnson co-wrote with the EU and signed.
Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner tonight said the PM’s speech was “as delusional as the Transport Secretary’s leadership bid - but sadly not as brief.”
She added: “He claimed the Deep State were plotting against him. Even now he cannot take responsibility or face reality - inspired not by Churchill or Thatcher… but by Trump.”
Calling for the “last person in Downing Street” to “please turn out the lightweights”, she said: “This PM is a danger to our democracy and our national security every day he clings on.
“The only deep state relevant tonight is the one he has left this country in.”
She went on: “They’re not just asleep at the wheel, they’re steering us straight into the eye of the storm.”
Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab accused Labour of “spineless, vacuous fence-sitting”, saying the party should call for a general election - despite Keir Starmer doing so less than two weeks ago.
“All critique, no cojones!” he said.
During an angry debate, Labour MP Dame Margaret Hodge blasted the “abhorrent culture of tolerating bullying and sexual harassment from political allies”, adding: “There’s an endless list of incompetence and waste.”
Saying the government “has no moral compass”, she went on: “It’s the creeping culture of corruption and the determination to close down those whose job it is to keep a check on executive power that makes this government unfit for evidence.
“There’s a growing body of evidence of corruption. Dodgy Russian money funding MPs and the Tory party. An explosion in illicit finance with Londongrad now the international capital for dirty money.
“Peerages for pals like [Tory donor Peter] Cruddas and [Russian-British tycoon Evgeny] Lebedev. Jobs for mates like James Wharton, to people from the PM’s city hall days. Contracts for cronies with only £0.2m of the £17.3bn contracts for PPE subject to open competition.”
Ex-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, now an independent MP, accused Mr Johnson of a “fantasy tour of this country” while there were “more food banks than branches of McDonalds” and “big Pharma have made so much out of owning the patents of the vaccines”.
Mr Corbyn added: “His government is presiding over the enriching of the richest, the impoverishment of the poorest and the greatest job insecurity in industry after industry.
“He has created poverty, inequality and insecurity. That is his legacy.”
Labour MP Jess Phillips said: "Since I was elected to this House, two members of the Conservative Party have gone to prison for perpetrating sexual crimes.
"In one of those cases I repeatedly begged various people with power, whether it was the chief whip on their side of the House, to intervene, to stop, to not give him the whip back, telling them how serious the accounts I had heard. Every single time it was ignored."
Labour MP Chris Bryant added: “I don't have confidence in this Government because they are obsessed with all the wrong things. They spend more time and energy protecting statues than protecting women from domestic abuse.
"They deliberately drive wedges between people over gender identity and trans rights and ignore the fact that their own equalities minister (Mike Freer) resigned because he thought the Government was creating a hostile environment for LGBT people."
In a light-hearted speech, the ousted PM joked Covid was caused by “distant misbehaviour involving bats or pangolins” and confessed he might be “more popular on the streets of Kyiv right now than I am in Kensington”.
He offered no apology and instead reeled off his achievements, boasting of Labour’s 2019 election defeat “we turned Redcar Bluecar” and “we sent the great blue Tory ferret so far up their left trouser leg they couldn't move.”
He also claimed the UK vaccine rollout was “so fast the EU commission actually tried to expropriate 5million doses of Astra to try to slow us down, it can be told. Shame is right.”
Loyalists queued up to praise the Tory leader - as right-wing No10 hopeful Liz Truss sat conspicuously by his side, despite him claiming he is not supporting any one candidate.
Sir Edward Leigh said attacks on the PM were “disgraceful” and he would be “completely loyal to him to the very end”. Michael Fabricant said the Tories were “making the same mistake the Labour Party made when they knifed Tony Blair.”
But Keir Starmer said Boris Johnson’s litany of disgraces had been “enabled by a corrupted Conservative Party”.
He added: “This is not the summer for Downing Street to be occupied by a vengeful squatter mired in scandal.”
