Theresa May has survived her first meeting with Conservative MPs since the resignations of David Davis and Boris Johnson plunged her government into turmoil on Monday.
A closed-door gathering of the 1922 Committee of backbench Conservative MPs could've been explosive for the prime minister, amid big-name departures and talk of a potential leadership challenge. But MPs who attended the gathering said May emerged with her authority strengthened.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, one of the party's most prominent Brexiteers, and a harsh critic of the new plan she outlined at Chequers on Friday, said a leadership contest was unlikely.
Westminster was still reeling from the dramatic departures of the foreign and Brexit secretaries on Monday night as Tory MPs crammed into a sweltering committee room, while dozens of journalists waiting outside in a narrow corridor. It was the first time May had addressed her party in private since presenting to her cabinet a new, softer plan for Brexit last week.
Several MPs who attended the meeting told reporters that May had told her colleagues they would have to be pragmatic and back her if they were to avoid losing the next election – and most appeared receptive. Those privately talking about replacing her kept it to themselves, they said.
Robert Buckland, the solicitor general, said May was displaying steely leadership and would emerge strengthened from the departures of Davis and Johnson. He compared her favourably to the German chancellor Angela Merkel.
“I think the comparisons with, you know, when Merkel went through those early years and had difficulties and then got stronger, she kept going,” Buckland said. “I think that’s striking.”
Rees-Mogg, the chair of the European Research Group, the alliance of Eurosceptics lobbying for a hard break from the European Union, and an outspoken critic of the Chequers proposal, said he hadn’t been reassured by the prime minister that her proposals will deliver what people voted for in June 2016.
Asked if he believed May’s assurances that she wouldn’t make any more concessions to the EU, Rees-Mogg said: “The prime minister has said on previous occasions that she wouldn’t change things and change then happens. You should believe the prime minister in the broad context of what she says but not always on the specificalities.”
But Rees-Mogg said he doubted that a motion of no confidence in May would follow the departures of Davis and Johnson.
“No I don’t think there will be a confidence vote,” he said.
Rees-Mogg said his main concern was that government aides had briefed Labour MPs on the Chequers plan, in hopes of winning enough support from the opposition to get the proposals through parliament.
“If the government plans to get the Chequers deal on the back of Labour party votes, that would be the most divisive thing it could do,” Rees-Mogg said. “And that would be a split coming from the top, not from the members of the Conservative party across the country.”
Despite Rees-Mogg’s complaints, May’s team appeared pleased with how the meeting went. Crammed into a sweltering room while dozens of journalists waited outside, the MPs at various points banged on the tables in approval.
Some MPs expressed reservations about the Brexit plan, one MP said, but there was no real personal animosity toward May or talk of leadership changes in the room.