It is at this point abundantly clear that Theresa May does not have enough Conservative votes to secure a Commons majority for her Brexit deal. Nor can she rely on the ten MPs of the Democratic Unionist Party.
Her only hope lies in convincing enough Labour MPs to back her Withdrawal Agreement come the meaningful vote. It does not take long, however, to reach the incontrovertible conclusion that it’s a forlorn one.
The number of Tory MPs who have resigned from the government payroll over Brexit alone is bigger than the number of Labour MPs who could realistically be expected to rebel – and as this list gets bigger, the chance of Downing Street convincing opposition MPs to vote with May gets smaller still.
- Steve Baker
- Guto Bebb
- Ben Bradley
- Suella Braverman
- Conor Burns
- Maria Caulfield
- Rehman Chishti
- Robert Courts
- David Davis
- Chris Green
- Ranil Jayawardena
- Andrea Jenkyns
- Boris Johnson
- Jo Johnson
- Phillip Lee
- Scott Mann
- Esther McVey
- Dominic Raab
- Anne-Marie Trevelyan
- Shailesh Vara
- Gareth Johnson
That makes 21 as good as nailed-on votes against the Withdrawal Agreement. Add to that the 10 DUP MPs and you have 30 – to say nothing of the many more Conservative backbenchers who have also signalled that they will vote against it too or have submitted no-confidence votes in Theresa May.
The number of Tory MPs who have publicly declared that they submitted letters to Graham Brady is currently running at 26. For our purposes 22 – that number minus Baker, Bradley, Green and Jenkyns, who all resigned from the payroll – is the number that matters.
- Peter Bone
- Andrew Bridgen
- Bill Cash
- Maria Caulfield
- Simon Clarke
- Philip Davies
- Nadine Dorries
- James Duddridge
- Mark Francois
- Zac Goldsmith
- Philip Hollobone
- Marcus Fysh
- Adam Holloway
- David Jones
- Anne-Marie Morris
- Sheryll Murray
- Jacob Rees-Mogg
- Laurence Robertson
- Lee Rowley
- Henry Smith
- Ross Thomson
- Martin Vickers
- John Whittingdale
That makes 53. Separately, 44 others have signalled that they will not vote for the Withdrawal Agreement in its current form.
- Heidi Allen
- David Amess
- John Baron
- Crispin Blunt
- Christopher Chope
- Damian Collins
- Richard Drax
- Steve Double
- Iain Duncan Smith
- Charlie Elphicke
- David Evenett
- Michael Fabricant
- Michael Fallon
- Justine Greening
- Dominic Grieve
- Sam Gymiah
- Rob Halfon
- John Hayes
- Bernard Jenkin
- John Lamont
- Edward Leigh
- Andrew Lewer
- Julian Lewis
- Julia Lopez
- Craig Mackinlay
- Scott Mann
- Stephen Metcalfe
- Nigel Mills
- Andrew Mitchell
- Damien Moore
- Matthew Offord
- Neil Parish
- Priti Patel
- Owen Paterson
- Mike Pennng
- Mark Pritchard
- John Redwood
- Douglas Ross
- Grant Shapps
- Royston Smith
- Anna Soubry
- Bob Stewart
- Desmond Swayne
- Hugo Swire
- Robert Syms
- Derek Thomas
- Michael Tomlinson
- Theresa Villiers
- Sarah Wollaston
Taken together, that at the very least makes a total of 101. Failure is inevitable.
Content from our partners
Related
