May survives confidence vote with a majority of 83 – as it happened

Coverage continues here for Thursday’s developments:

Folks, we’re going to call it a night and wrap up this blog.

For the night shift workers and insomniacs among you, don’t worry, I’ll be back with a fresh blog in just a few hours (about 5:30am) as we look ahead to what next for Theresa May, Britain and Brexit.

Thanks for following along, for your great questions on Twitter and fabulous comments (30k comments! solid effort Politics Live community).

See you shortly.

Impact on the pound

The pound largely held onto overnight gains on Thursday after British Prime Minister Theresa May pulled through a no-confidence vote on her leadership that bought her more time to try to sell her unpopular Brexit deal to a deeply divided parliament.

The euro edged higher against the dollar after Italy lowered its deficit target for next year and said it expected the European Commission to accept its new 2019 budget proposal.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback against six major rivals, was steady at 97.032. It had fallen from a near one-month high overnight, losing almost half a percent, its steepest drop in two weeks.

In a secret ballot, May won the support from 200 of 317 Conservative lawmakers.

Any respite for the pound was expected to be short-lived, however, as a mutiny by more than a third of her lawmakers signalled she was no nearer to passing her plan to leave the European Union.

“Just after the actual result was announced, profit-taking dominated, (but) sterling stopped appreciating,” said Masafumi Yamamoto, chief currency strategist at Mizuho Securities.

“That shows it’s not bad news, but it doesn’t fix the Brexit issue. In that sense, uncertainty continues.”

Sterling held steady at $1.2627 in early trade on Thursday. It had bounced off a 20-month low of $1.2477 during the previous session, ending 1.1 percent higher on the day in the aftermath of the vote.

An excellent question from a reader:

Dan Sabbagh has this answer to that question:

What will the Labour party do now – can it force the situation?

It would be intriguing if Labour were to call a vote of no confidence in May’s government, given the scale of the rebellion on Wednesday night. If hard Brexiters really want a change of leadership – they could, in theory, side with Labour, although in practice that would be a major step for a Tory MP to take.

Under the Fixed Term Parliament Act that would not immediately force a general election, but rather open a 14-day window for somebody else, almost certainly another Tory leader, to form a new government, which would need to be confirmed by a further vote of confidence.

That alone, might give Labour strategists pause – but the party leadership is also holding back because, if it does not succeed, defeat in a vote of no confidence could play into the hands of second referendum campaigners.

Those calling for a second vote want Labour to conclude that it cannot force a general election in line with its carefully crafted Brexit policy, and move on to campaigning for another referendum instead.

But Jeremy Corbyn has always been lukewarm and there is huge suspicion over the subject among those close to the leader, because many of those keenest on a second referendum in the party have been some of the biggest critics of him in the past.

Labour may act in calling for a vote of no confidence, but it would be a surprise if did so before Christmas. The party line is that it wants to see May definitively fail in the Brexit talks first and that is more likely to take place in the new year.

From Naomi Long, leader of the Alliance Party and East Belfast Assembly member:

Associated Press has this summary of reactions from different politicians to today’s vote:

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, an ally, said the result showed that May “has the support of her party.”

“This is a clear statement by the parliamentary party they want her to go forward, they want her to lead us through Brexit,” he told Sky News.

But pro-Brexit Conservative MP Mark Francois said the result was “devastating” for May, who has lost the support of a third of her party in Parliament.

“If I were her, I wouldn’t be pleased with this at all,” Francois said. “I think she needs to think very carefully about what to do now.”

Opposition lawmakers expressed astonishment and outrage at the Conservative civil war erupting in the middle of the fraught Brexit process.

“This government is a farce, the Tory party is in chaos, the prime minister is a disgrace,” Scottish National Party leader Ian Blackford said during a pugnacious Prime Minister’s Questions session in the House of Commons.

British business figures expressed exasperation at the continuing political uncertainty.

“With news that the prime minister remains in place, business communities will hope that these political games can finally be put to bed,” said Adam Marshall, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce.

“Westminster must now focus all its energy on urgently giving businesses clarity on the future and avoiding a messy or disorderly Brexit.”

13 Dec 201819.29 EST

Dan Sabbagh

What about the ‘meaningful vote’?

The result clearly highlights May’s essential Brexit problem. The number of rebels at 117 is eyecatchingly similar to the 100 or so MPs who were planning to vote against her Brexit deal before she postponed the vote a day before its scheduled date of Tuesday.

It is a blocking minority preventing the current deal, or anything like it, from being ratified by parliament. To win round that amount of rebels, May has to make dramatic progress in her talks with Brussels and persuade the right of her party that she can “bin the backstop”.

However, the European Union has made it repeatedly clear that the legally binding 585-page withdrawal agreement – which contains the Northern Irish backstop – is not up for renegotiation. And without renegotiation, the backstop will endure and Tory rebels will almost certainly not vote for it.

No 10 has promised that the vote will happen before 21 January, which in negotiating terms is very little time at all. So the Brexit fundamentals at Westminster remain, for now, unchanged.

Vince Cable, leader of the Liberal Democrats, is on Twitter calling for a People’s Vote.

13 Dec 201819.08 EST

Dan Sabbagh

My colleague Dan Sabbagh has written a very helpful article answering some key questions that have arisen from the day’s events. You can read the full article here, I’ll be posting some of his answers in the blog, starting with:

Has Theresa May done enough to secure her position?

The 200-117 result is in truth finely balanced. It is enough of a win to avoid Theresa May’s immediate resignation, but the rebellion is at a significant level too.

Hard Brexiters such as Mark Francois took immediately to the airwaves to point out, correctly, that over a third of the Conservative parliamentary party had voted against May.

Once the government ministers are excluded, that proportion rises to more than half of the so-called no-payroll vote.

Some called for her to sleep on the result, and – rather than go to Brussels on Thursday for the next round of Brexit talks with the European Union – to resign.

But it is easy to dismiss that sort of talk as sour grapes: in the end May won the contest in front of her and given the sensitive position of the Brexit negotiations it is hard to imagine cabinet members calling on her to go with so much unresolved.

There’s been a lot of talk today about May’s win being a “pyrrhic victory”. We’re all extremely intelligent people and know exactly what that is, of course, but just in case anybody needs a refresher …

View image in fullscreen

May also features on the front pages of foreign papers. In the Netherlands, May is said to have done a “Houdini-act” of escape.

The papers are starting to roll in and it does not look good for May. The narrative is not one of triumph for the PM, but of her barely scraping through and indeed many papers are saying she is fatally wounded and should leave.

The Sun tells the prime minister “Time to call it a May”, showing its inability to pass up any opportunity to get a play on words into their headline. Let’s hope for the sake of the Sun’s sub-editors that whoever is PM next has a name that lends itself equally well to punning.

“A vote to Remain, but when will she Leave?” asks the Telegraph. The Mirror says: “It’s lame duck for Christmas” saying May’s “goose is cooked”.

But two papers are backing May and her authority. The Daily Mail’s headline is “Now let her get on with the job!” and the Express has “Now just let her get on with it”.

Hello politics fans, this is Kate Lyons taking over from Kevin Rawlinson to mop up any late-night developments and reaction.

If you want to get in touch, tweet me @mskatelyons or write me a message in the comments.

It’s been a busy day in Westminster but here’s a summary of the events so far:

• Theresa May won a confidence vote among her parliamentary party colleagues by 200 votes to 117. Under the Conservatives’ rules, that meant the effort to force her to stand down from within the party is over for at least a year. However, the result – as well as the fact that enough MPs were willing to demand a vote in the first place – led some of her colleagues to conclude May should resign anyway. Crucially, May appeared to retain the support of her cabinet.
  
• In an effort to sway MPs who were wavering, May said she would not fight the general election in 2022. The promise was interpreted as a compromise to allow her to stay on in the medium term to see through Brexit and may have convinced some undecided MPs to back her.
  
• Jeremy Corbyn challenged May to call the Brexit vote next week. The Labour leader said the victory over the plotters in her own parliamentary party made no difference; May had still “lost her majority in parliament” and was “unable to deliver a Brexit deal that works for the country”, he said.
  
• Speaking outside No 10 after the result of the vote was announced, May said she now wanted to focus on the task at hand. And, echoing Corbyn’s rhetoric in recent days, she stressed that that included more than just Brexit, saying she would also prioritise housing, public services and other issues.

That’s all from me. I’m now handing over to my colleague Kate Lyons.

12 Dec 201818.04 EST

Martin Kettle

So, Steve Baker, Jacob Rees-Mogg and the rest of you, was that really worth it? After the day of folly it doesn’t look that way. In the end, the interminably long-discussed Conservative leadership challenge to Theresa May has come to nothing. When it came to it – even in a secret ballot where MPs could set their public protestations of loyalty to one side – it proved to be more mouth than trousers, a scary firework banger, but a one-day wonder, a brief distraction from the serious business of Brexit. Tomorrow, grownup politics, damned difficult politics, resumes after today’s hiatus.

The leader of the Scottish National party and the first minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, has also been having her say:

This result is barely even a pyrrhic victory for the prime minister, who has now admitted her time in office is limited. She may have clung on to the Conservative leadership, but her remaining authority has been fatally undermined.

Even after being forced into saying she would stand down soon, almost 40% of her parliamentary group have voted against her – meaning presumably a majority of her backbenchers did so. In any normal situation, the prime minister’s position would be untenable.

She said the UK is in a state of political chaos that can be traced to a “vicious civil war that has engulfed the self-centred Conservative party”.

The cost to Scotland of being under Westminster control and at the mercy of a Tory civil war has never been clearer. The prime minister cannot – and must not – use this result to support her claim that the choice is now between her bad Brexit and a catastrophic no-deal Brexit.

And Sturgeon said her party would “support any second EU referendum which has remain as an option”.

Our priority is to do all we can to stop the UK Government dragging Scotland off the Brexit cliff-edge, which is set to do so much damage to jobs, communities and living standards.

Responding to the vote, the Lib Dem leader, Vince Cable, has said:

Having seen the Conservative backbenches will not support her deal, the prime minister must change course.

Her deal is doomed to defeat in the Commons, so she should show real leadership by putting this question back to the public in a people’s vote.

The EU is clear that there is no more negotiating to do, so it’s this deal or no Brexit. That is the choice on which every voter should now have a final say – and Liberal Democrats will campaign vigorously for the UK to remain a full member of the EU.

A minor point but one that’s been getting a bit of attention today and which Jacob Rees-Mogg has sought to clarify: His use of the phrase “on the payroll” in reference to his government colleagues is not, he says, perjorative. He told Sky News earlier:

They’re known colloquially as the payroll. That doesn’t mean that the pay is influencing their decision. What it means is that, if they are in government, they have to support the prime minister or resign.