Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Can Theresa May win a no confidence vote?

One of the more surreal moments of Theresa May’s day so far has been the Prime Minister having to break off from the meltdown of her party to join Prince Charles’s birthday celebrations at Buckingham Palace. The Prime Minister can’t have felt particularly like waving a champagne flute around to salute the heir to the throne while her own MPs plot to remove her crown as Tory leader.

The announcement from Jacob Rees-Mogg that he is submitting a letter calling for a vote of no confidence suggests that the European Research Group believes there are the numbers in the wider Conservative Party for May to lose that vote. I wrote about why this was a few weeks ago: there are a number of MPs, including ministers, who are not particularly passionate about Brexit but who are unimpressed with the Prime Minister to the extent that they – at the very least – cannot say if they would back her in a vote of no confidence.

Isabel Hardman
Written by
Isabel Hardman
Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of The Spectator and author of Why We Get the Wrong Politicians. She also presents Radio 4’s Week in Westminster.

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