In the three days since the publication of the senior civil servant Sue Gray’s report into lockdown-busting parties in No 10, there has been a drip-feed of Tory MPs condemning the scandal and calling on Boris Johnson to resign.
The former cabinet minister David Davis, who dramatically told the prime minister to step aside in January in the House of Commons, claimed on Saturday that discontent was spreading across the party’s ranks.
With a major poll showing the party could hold on to just three out of 88 key battleground seats at the next election, the senior Conservative said many of his colleagues “frankly see their own seats disappearing in many cases”.
He is one of 24 MPs (eight of them since the publication of Ms Gray’s report) who have publicly stated they no longer support the prime minister, with over a dozen of them having confirmed submitting letters of no confidence.
Under the party’s rules, a confidence vote will only be triggered if 15 per cent of the parliamentary party – 54 Tory MPs in the current parliament – submit a letter of to the chairman of the Conservatives’ 1922 backbench committee, Sir Graham Brady.
Sir Graham has a reputation in Westminster for keeping the true figure of no confidence letters a closely guarded secret and he will only publicly disclose the figure if the threshold is passed – traditionally after giving the Tory leader advanced warning.
The 1922 committee, which is in charge of running leadership contests, will then ask all Tory MPs to cast their vote in a secret ballot in the corridors of Westminster.
If a vote is called, Mr Johnson would have to secure the confidence of 180 MPs – 50 per cent of the parliamentary party – to remain as Conservative leader and prime minister. If he falls, the party will then trigger a leadership contest.
Technically, if a Tory leader wins the vote, their position is secured for at least 12 months. Whether they can survive that period politically is another question: six months after emerging victorious from a confidence vote, Theresa May announced her resignation outside No 10.
While many in Westminster believe a confidence vote in Mr Johnson is a matter of when, not if, it is not a foregone conclusion and the timing is highly unpredictable.
Besides Sir Graham, no individual really knows the true number of no confidence letters that have been submitted. Many MPs will not announce whether they have written to the 1922 committee, and others may have wthdrawn letters without publicly announcing.
There also appears to be no evidence to suggest the statements – largely published on MPs’ websites – are coordinated.
Take the MP Steve Brine. The former health minister published a statement on Wednesday on his website, saying he had submitted a letter of no confidence. It wasn’t advertised on social media and no one seemed to notice until Saturday.
