54 Letters Submitted ?

[tyke1962]

Word coming out of the Tory Party is that the 54 Letters have been submitted which will trigger a leadership election .

Unofficial at the moment mind .

[drfchound]

Word coming out of the Tory Party is that the 54 Letters have been submitted which will trigger a leadership election .

Unofficial at the moment mind .

I didn’t think it was far away.

[Glyn_Wigley]

If they do badly in next month's bye-elections it might just tip it over.

[danumdon]

Looks like its finally dawned on tory MPs that whatever x factor they thought Johnson brought to the position has long gone up in smoke with all the indiscretions that he has been party to.

I'm imagining that the majority will be taking sounding over the bank holiday weekend about how to save their political skins and its not going to involve Johnson, the trouble is there is no natural successor to take the mantle, the correct decision now could really upset the apple cart come the next general election.

Labour i'm thinking would rather like to see Johnson hold on and blunder all way to the GE. He's become Labour's secret weapon.

I believe if both party's managed to get rid of these so called leaders they would both increase their chances massively.

[SydneyRover]

The tories would bite an arm off for the polls that labour are getting under this 'so-called leader'

[SydneyRover]

''When Theresa May faced a confidence vote in 2018, only 27 of the 48 MPs who had submitted letters were known publicly''

The Times

[ravenrover]

54 out of how many Tory MP's 350odd? How many of the other 300 are going to vote to put The Greasy Piglet out of office in the no-confidence vote? I wouldn't get too excited yet

[Arsenal Of The North]

If they don’t get rid, then labour will walk back into office, I can’t see how tories can win the next GE under his leadership.

Mind I’m no political expert!

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

Of course they still then need 125 other Mps to agree with them for him to lose the vote.  Has any Tory leader lost the vote before whilst pm?

[drfchound]

If they don’t get rid, then labour will walk back into office, I can’t see how tories can win the next GE under his leadership.

Mind I’m no political expert!

If he does get the boot, then depending on who gets the top job I think the opposite could be the case.

[BillyStubbsTears]

The process of having a vote of confidence in a Tory leader is a relatively new one. The current rules came in in 1998, with the requirement that, to oust a sitting leader, there needs to be simple majority of Tory MPs vote against them, and to instigate a vote,15% of Tory MPs need to call for it.

Previously, there was a direct challenge to a sitting leader, with an MP putting themselves up for a 1-2-1 vote of Tory MPs.

Of those votes, I don't think any sitting Tory PM has "lost" the vote in terms of receiving fewer votes than the challenger.

On the other hand, Thatcher didn't "win" the vote against Heseltine in 1990. In that vote, she won a narrow overall majority of votes, but the rules were that to "win" the vote, you needed to get something like 60% of the votes. If you got, say 55%, there'd be a re-vote. Because Thatcher didn't get over that hurdle, it was clear that she couldn't go on - she didn't have the confidence of a very large set of the Tory party, so she resigned.

That's the only example I can think of where a Tory PM has effectively lost a vote of confidence by the Tory party.

The other massive example is where Chamberlain lost a vote of confidence in the House of Commons after his shambolic handling of the early WWII action.

[normal rules]

The trickle of doubt within the Tory party has turned into a stream.