The threat to Theresa May’s premiership can be accurately measured by the number of broadcasters’ gazebos on Cromwell Green, opposite the Houses of Parliament.
On Thursday last week, as Jacob Rees-Mogg solemnly published his letter of no confidence, the small square of grass was crowded with tents of international broadcasters. A week later, one damp gazebo remains on the green, with a stack of empty chairs under it.
There is still a threat to the prime minister. But no new letters have emerged since the start of the week. And MPs from the hard Brexit European Research Group have privately conceded the 48 needed for a full confidence vote may not be reached, though they hope that a loss for May in parliament may trigger a fresh wave.
“Organising the ERG is like herding cats,” one despairing MP said. “Certainly some people have been telling us they have submitted a letter who may not have done, probably just to get us to go away.”
Another said they had genuinely believed the number was close and that Rees-Mogg would not have issued such a public declaration unless someone had “done the maths”.
Optimistic MPs had predicted the threshold would be reached by Thursday afternoon, then by Friday, then that MPs needed time to speak to their local associations over the weekend. Then Monday went by with only a handful more MPs submitting letters. No more have been publicly sent since.
Rees-Mogg insisted on Tuesday he had made no personal predictions that they would secure the magic number. “We never believed 48 was a done deal,” one Brexiter said, saying Rees-Mogg’s speech had been designed as encouraging, rather than demanding.”
One critic of the plot to oust May said they had come to the conclusion the rebels had far fewer names than was assumed. “About 25 have said so publicly, maybe there’s a handful privately, but more than that? What’s the psychology at this stage between writing a letter and not saying so? I can’t think of many people that would apply to,” the MP said.
Few rebels feel any anger towards the ringleaders of the campaign to oust May – Rees-Mogg and the former Brexit minister Steve Baker, who has organised much of the ground campaign – and still hold out hope that the challenge will come if May loses a vote in parliament on the Brexit deal. More than 60 MPs have publicly declared they will vote against her deal.
One letter-writer claimed they had spoken to four or five colleagues who had drafted letters but then withheld them, believing the public would be more accepting if they were sent after May lost the meaningful vote in parliament.
MPs who wish to oust May must write privately to Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tories. Brady has previously spoken about his amusement at the disconnect between what colleagues said and what they did.
“I’ve certainly had the experience of someone claiming publicly to have written me a letter when they hadn’t – and then again seeing them in public on the media saying they’d withdrawn the letter that they hadn’t written in the first place,” he said. “Over the last eight years I’ve seen pretty much every permutation.”
The failure to generate a confidence vote has exposed a generational split in the ERG’s ranks, between some of the younger generation and some Eurosceptic grandees, who have viewed a leadership challenge as too hasty.
Sources named the veteran MPs Bernard Jenkin and Iain Duncan Smith, though others suggested that the latter had come under less pressure given he had faced his own confidence vote as Tory leader.
MPs said Downing Street thought MPs like Jenkin and Duncan Smith would have influence on others. Duncan Smith met the prime minister in Downing Street, along with the former environment secretary Owen Paterson, in what was touted to be a “moment” by other Brexiters, but ended in them leaving tight-lipped and sounding positive.
“He gets more butter than the average crumpet, he’s lathered in it,” one MP said of Duncan Smith. “What Downing Street don’t get is that the younger generation are very loyal to Steve and Jacob.”
Even some of the prime minister’s fiercest opponents will grudgingly concede she will stay in post if there is no confidence vote by January. Rees-Mogg himself warned the prime minister would probably take the party into the next election if they did not move now.
“If we don’t get 48 letters by January then she has to stay, it’s too late then,” one MP said. “The only possible time we could run a leadership contest with the members is over Christmas.
“But if she stays, then my colleagues should understand that we are not going to put our necks on the line again. If people want to oust her before the next election then it will have to be a different 48 people.”