Mayday: The Prime Minister's Brexit Plan Has Crashed

Peter Harris

Politics, Europe

Theresa May now faces a vote of no confidence, but will it be enough to oust her from Britain's most powerful political position?

For a while now, the refrain in London has been that Theresa May is a prime minister “in office but not in power.” But even this stinging witticism was not enough to capture the situation yesterday, when May lost a House of Commons vote on her plan to withdraw from the European Union (EU) by a thumping 230 votes—the largest government defeat in over a century. It was a humiliating loss, with no fewer than 118 (over a third) of May’s own Conservative members of parliament (MPs) voting against her.

In normal times, May would be out of a job. But these are not normal times, and the prime minister looks likely to cling to office in the short term. One reason is that the Conservative Party’s rulebook says that leaders can only face one internal challenge per year, and May fended off such an attempt only last month. And so while some Tory backbenchers might be seething at May’s haplessness, they have lost the opportunity to replace her with a more effective colleague.

The only other way to topple the prime minister would be for her government to lose a vote of no confidence in the House of Commons. May will face exactly such a test later today. Yet despite her torrid time yesterday, the prime minister will probably defy the odds and secure the support of most MPs when push comes to shove. This is because even the most disloyal Conservative lawmakers prefer May’s leadership to a Labour government headed by their arch-rival, Jeremy Corbyn. The same goes for the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the small Northern Irish party that has been propping up May’s government since June 2017 (but voted against May yesterday).