Digis Mak

AAfter a snap contest whose abbreviated timetable was tailored to his advantage, Boris Johnson won the vote of confidence tonight only by 211 to 148 votes, with all 359 Conservative MPs casting ballots. It is a win, but it is also a disaster for the prime minister.The real victor in the 2022 Tory leadership confidence vote was not Johnson. He is irreparably damaged. Politicians don't recover from such things. Nor was the victor the Conservative party. The winners were the parties of opposition: Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and the nationalists.That is because, with the unpopular Johnson losing his electoral allure but now reconfirmed, but only just, as Tory leader, the opposition parties are now on course to oust the Conservatives from office in the next general electi...

Boris Johnson's allies had always said about the vote of no confidence that victory by just one vote was still a win, and he would remain in Downing Street and get on with delivering “the people's priorities”.They will no doubt be cracking opening the bubbly on Monday evening. But the truth is that with 148 votes against him, the task of governing is likely to become more, not less difficult in the weeks and months ahead.As rebel MPs determined to oust him are likely to point out at the earliest opportunity, those 148 rebels dramatically outnumber Johnson's working majority of 75.While they are not a coherent group of zealots, of the kind that ultimately saw off Theresa May over Brexit policy, her detractors do share a set of concerns they may now feel emboldened to pursue more vocally...

EITHEROnly last week every cabinet minister was insisting that there would not be a vote of no confidence in Boris Johnson. That such an idea was pure media confection. Imagine their surprise then to wake up this morning and hear Graham Brady announce that the number of letters to trigger a vote had been exceeded. Nice to have a government with its finger on the pulse. The rest of us had already had today inked in the diary. A fifth day of the jubilee celebrations.Within minutes the Convict had drafted a letter to all his MPs with a list of his achievements. Largely imagined. He had got all the big decisions right. Apart from the ones he had got hopelessly wrong. It was time to move on from Partygate. It was what the public wanted. Apart from those militant monarchists who ha...