British PM’s leadership is comforted, but uncertainty remains over Brexit deal vote.
The British Prime Minister has won a vote of no confidence in her leadership party on Wednesday night.
Theresa May faced down her biggest political crisis since assuming office a month after Britons voted in June 2016 to leave the EU.
The so-called 1922 committee, responsible for the Conservative Party’s leadership organization, received a motion by more than 48 members on a vote of no-confidence on Tuesday night, and conducted the vote on Wednesday night.
Earlier in the day, a majority of Conservative MPs had publicly announced that they would support their leader.
“The result of the ballot held this evening is that the parliamentary party does have confidence in Theresa May as leader of the Conservative party,” said the count official, MP Graham Brady.
The final count put 200 MPs voting for May, and 117 against. The count is significant, because it gives a broad picture of where the Prime Minister stands in the opinion of her party.
A majority of 83 does not give her the overwhelming support she would have wanted, especially as the vote was only won after she announced that she would not be running as a leader in the next general election, which is scheduled to take place in 2022.
In recent days, May has struggled to do damage control in the face of an angry parliament after the delay of a key vote on her Brexit deal in a desperate move that left the agreement and her own future in limbo.
On Tuesday, the prime minister toured European capitals in an attempt to salvage her in jeopardy deal after parliament members savaged its provisions on the issue of the Irish border.
Multiple frustrated voices within European politics said that there would be no renegotiation of the Brexit deal.
The British leader has steadfastly defended the negotiated deal as “the best deal available, adding: “There’s no deal available that doesn’t have a backstop”, referring to the complex issue over the Irish border that has crystallized tensions inside her party.
The leader of the opposition immediately asked May to call a vote on the Brexit deal for next week – May earlier floated that the vote would not be held before January 21st.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the radical Brexit conservative MP who called for the vote of no confidence told BBC that, although he accepted the vote, Theresa May still “ought to go and see the Queen urgently and resign”.
Source: i24 News