So last night I would like to think we had quite a good
Thread on the go regarding
the vote in parliament for Mays Brexit deal. For those who don't know that vote resulted in the biggest defeat for any government in history, it was a
whopping defeat of 230 votes. Immediately following that that announcement Jeremy Corbyn stood up in parliament and motioned
a vote of no confidence in the government.
Now for those who might not be fully aware, a vote of no confidence in the government isn't a vote of no confidence in Theresa May herself as PM but
rather it is a vote taken by MPs asserting their confidence in the governments ability to operate effectively as set out under the
Fixed-Term Parliaments act of 2011.
So will the motion pass?
Well for it to pass it needs to pass with a majority of MPs. Now, not including the 7 Sinn Féin MPs who never take part in Westminster votes that
leaves us with
643 total votes, the speaker along with
his deputies tend not to have their votes counted in such motions nor do the "tellers" votes that gives us a new total of 635. It is also likely that
the one abstention from last nights vote (due to hill health) will also not vote so in total we can expect 634 votes in total. So if 318 MPs vote with
"no confidence" in the government then the vote passes.
So ,if we do some simple maths and assume that the 8 independent MPs are not going to risk losing their seats along with the Conservatives 317 (well
ok 315 minus those votes not counted but lets not muddy the maths) in addition to the 10 DUP MPs who have said they will vote to
support the government that gives us
a grand total of...... 335 in support of the government and 299 who would vote against the government which would mean the motion would not pass. Now
this assumes that everyone votes along party lines.
Lets not forget that May recently faced a
leaders
hip contest that she won but 117 of her own MPs voted against her and 118 of her own MPs voted against her deal last night. That means that we
can safely say that there are at least over 100 MPs who are very unhappy with Mays leadership regarding Brexit. This could have an impact on the maths
because a vote of no confidence does not mean an automatic general election. Rather what will happen is that parliament then have 14 days to form a
new government and failing that there is a general election. This means that its not entirely inconceivable that these 100 or so Conservative rebels
(Mostly hard Brextieers) might vote against the government, thus ousting May and then form their own government although this would be a very muddy
situation that would be almost unprecedented in UK politics. It also means that the maths above might change, it could also change if the DUP have a
change of heart which would not be surprising.
So whilst it seams most likely that Mays government will survive this vote there is still an outside change that we could see another Conservative
backbench revolt against the government resulting in the government losing the vote of no confidence. There could be some really interesting potential
voting which makes a absolute prediction (like we had last night) all but impossible, there could be a huge backbench revolt, the DUP could vote
against the government, Labour Rebels might not want to risk loosing their seats, the Queen to tell everyone to piss off and that the new government
will be entirely made up from the Board of Rangers FC. Who knows what's going to happen!
There are a whole multitude of factors that play into this and no doubt it's going to be an interesting evening.
The vote is at 19:00 GMT tonight.
edit on 16-1-2019 by OtherSideOfTheCoin because: (no reason given)