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As of today, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Theresa May, has resigned.

One reason for this might hypothetically have been an expectation that she would lose a vote of no confidence in the future. As of the last vote of no confidence against her, in January, however, the Conservatives and Labour voted in lockstep for their respective positions, with the result being that she remained PM.

Has there been any indication that any Tory MPs have considered taking the other side in a vote of no confidence since the previous vote?

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    The threatened VoNC was not a parliamentary one, but a Conservative Party one. It was suggested that if she refused to set out a timetable for her departure, the party was about to change its rules to allow an immediate (party) VoNC, which she might well lose.
    – Steve Melnikoff
    May 24, 2019 at 21:10
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    Note that she has resigned as leader of the Conservative Party, with effect from 7 June. She will stay as PM until a new party leader is elected, which is expected to happen at the end of July.
    – Steve Melnikoff
    May 24, 2019 at 21:11

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There have been plenty of calls in recent weeks to revisit the 1922 Committee rule whereby PMs cannot be challenged again for a year, with some Tories (e.g. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the committee's treasurer) openly saying they'd vote against May. And as noted in the comments, a few Conservatives have defected to ChangeUK in the past few months. Also, she had an unruly meeting with her cabinet in recent days, and Andrea Leadsom ultimately resigned from her government, basically refusing to present May's "new" Brexit bill to Parliament.

The last time there had been a leadership challenge within the Conservative Party, May's cabinet was still behind her, so it was basically the ERG voting against her and the others voting to support her. If the cabinet infighting reported in the news is anything to go by, that is no longer the case.

The last time there had been a vote of no confidence proper in Parliament, Tories and the DUP sided against the opposition to avoid a new election. It's anyone's guess how that would have worked out had it occurred -- on the one hand side it's hard to imagine Conservatives wanting to trigger a new election, but on the other the Tories really didn't want May anymore.

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  • You're putting those forward as indirect signs that some MPs might have voted against May, I assume?
    – Obie 2.0
    May 24, 2019 at 16:45
  • I couldn't quite make sense of the ultimate sentence - it seems like a fragment?
    – Caius Jard
    May 24, 2019 at 16:46
  • Looking at the article, it might make sense to mention that the call to revisit the committee rule was from Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, a Tory, who basically did seem to be saying he'd be against her in a vote of no confidence, and that he'd try to change the rules to do so.
    – Obie 2.0
    May 24, 2019 at 16:48
  • There were several calls to that effect insofar as I can remember. No idea who was the first to make that call. Hopefully the lengthier answer addresses your questions.
    – Denis de Bernardy
    May 24, 2019 at 16:55
  • It might be worth including the fact that there are also actually now fewer Conservative MPs than there were in January, due to defections to Change UK etc.
    – origimbo
    May 24, 2019 at 17:02

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